Red Moon: Revolution Chapter 21
Sean stood on the docks, the barren, empty docks. This was where the ferry would normally com and pick up curious tourists to carry them over to the old prison island that stood prominently in the bay with its large towers that would cast down lights onto the surrounding waters. The docks were empty because the island was closed to the public and with plenty of other better vantage points to see Alcatraz from, there was no reason for anyone to be there.
“You sure this is where we’re supposed to be?” Sean asked, still gazing at the waters, shading his eyes with his hand to block the glare of the sun coming off of the water. They had been there for two hours, waiting for something or someone.
Rob sat on a nearby bench, legs kicked out in front of him and arms spread over the back of the bench that needed a new coat of paint. The old white paint was chipping off, exposing the splintering wood underneath. He shrugged. “This was where I was told to go and this is where we’re going to wait until someone comes to pick us up.”
Sean gazed at the island. “It’s closed though, maybe we can try again tomorrow.”
Rob chuckled. “It’s closed to the public, not us.” He leaned his head back and pulled his baseball cap over his eyes. “Just relax, someone will be here.” He slumped slightly more, planning on catching a few winks. He knew that they would have to wait for a while, his father was very picky and paranoid about security, though it had shocked Rob to learn that his father had managed to close off the entire island of Alcatraz for this meeting.
Rob didn’t think that this meeting warranted this much security. Sure, this was the first time he would be seeing his father since going AWOL. It was a hard decision to leave the Inquisition. He didn’t agree with the organization at all, but it was part of his family’s legacy. There was always someone from the family in the Inquisition, all the way back to its inception at the end of the Crusades.
His father had him trained since a young child to become a Guardian, the Inquisition’s elite soldiers, capable of holding their own against werewolves. It was a brutal upbringing that required years of hard physical and mental training. Rob still had memories of those worst years of his life where he lived by a military doctrine, had little freedom and no hope of getting away. He resented the Inquisition and his father for that and that was why he left as soon as he had an opportunity.
Now he was here, sitting at some docks, waiting for one of his father’s henchmen to ferry them to the prison. As much as he would have preferred to have stayed in the dark and hide in his quiet corner of Washington, he couldn’t.
The Inquisition was in the states, Washington state to be more specific and they were getting close to home, close to Sean, close to Taima, close to everyone that would be a target. He was doing this to essentially beg for some sort of deal. He didn’t want to see the Inquisition coming to kill all that he knew and love.
Making first contact was easy, all of the old contact methods still worked. All he had to do was send a single postcard to a specific address with a coded message. He received instructions within a week.
At first, Rob was going to come alone, but Sean insisted on coming as well, despite knowing the dangers.
Sean was a werewolf, not a very good one, but he was one. He had managed to get into a fairly desperate scrape with a feral werewolf and didn’t get away unscathed. The mutagen that inhabits the bodily fluids of a werewolf got into his bloodstream. Normally a healthy body could fight off something like a small amount of blood in a scratch, but a ill timed case of the flu weakened Sean’s immune system enough that lycanthropy took hold.
It was a scary time, that week after the blood moon the previous year. One day Sean called Rob at work, complaining about blurry vision and a headache and asked for a ride to the hospital. Rob, who was on work, rode to Sean’s house along with Taima, a local werewolf who Rob had become close friends with. He didn’t know if there ever was going to be a thing between them, but he wasn’t opposed to the idea.
They arrived at Sean’s house to find it empty with the door busted down. At first they thought that Sean, impatient as he was, tried to go to the hospital himself and then proceeded to get robbed, though a closer inspection made that obviously not true.
The door was broken from the inside, the shards being shattered outwards onto the lawn and there were claw marks everywhere on the inside which was torn to ribbons.
Taima then caught the scent of the wolf and she went off to find it. Rob followed suit, but the search wasn’t long before they found Sean passed out in the woods, naked.
The coming months were stressful and productive as Taima taught and instructed Sean on how to control himself. He was a good student and adapted to his new life quickly and before he knew it, he was able to completely control himself, though he couldn’t quite grasp running on all fours at anything faster than a trot and would trip over himself whenever he tried to run. Rob tried not to laugh whenever he saw the gray wolf, that was small for a werewolf, but still pretty big for a four legged canine, have its feet tangle under him and proceed to cartwheel.
“Hey.” Rob woke up to Sean shaking his shoulder. He had fallen asleep waiting and had no idea what time it was. When he peeled the cap off of his face that was coated in a light sheen of sweat, he saw that the sun was significantly lower now.
“What?” Rob waved away Sean like an annoying fly.
Sean pointed out at the bay and Rob squinted his tired eyes. “I don’t see anything.” He said, but kept looking before he saw a ferry leave the Alcatraz and begin to head towards them. “Never mind.” He stretched and slowly got up from his nap.
The air was still warm and Rob scratched his stomach that had grown out more in recent months, partially due to stress and partially due to him finding a new found love for doughnuts.
“So…” Sean went over to the edge of the dock to wait for the boat. “What do we do when it get’s here?” He knew about the Inquisition and Rob’s father, his friend had informed him of everything when he got the letter back after mailing out his postcard. He decided to come along because this affected him and he wanted a say and plus, he needed to get out. Even as a werewolf, he was still a bit of a hermit in his home.
“They’re going to let us know when they get here.” Rob stood next to Sean and watched the ferry, the same one that one would normally carry passengers, but now had three men dressed in the same blue uniforms with vibrant orange life jackets that the normal ferry workers would wear. However, they weren’t ferry workers, they worked for Rob’s father and were only dressed as they were for the news helicopters that were buzzing the area, capturing as much as their greedy cameras could.
The ferry came to a slow stop next to the dock and a wooden ramp was lowered.
“Hurry up.” A bald white man who looked pissed at the world ordered them from the top of the ramp. Rob and Sean listened, hurrying up the ramp that was pulled back on board as soon as they were on and the boat immediately went into reverse, away from the now completely empty dock.
The bald man looked up at a helicopter that was hovering one hundred meters away, the camera man aiming his camera at them. “Inside.” The man said and turned to enter the inside of the ferry.
The trip was done in silence other than a quick pat down. They found Rob’s sidearm that he had brought and confiscated it, but made no other comments. They were led to some chairs and left there unguarded since the bald man went up a set of stairs.
Neither Rob nor Sean spoke, they had too much on their minds. Sean was thinking about what he got himself into. It was exciting for the man since it was something new and he fantasized about changing into a werewolf and fighting off some bad guys would jump out of nowhere. He of course, knew that no such thing would happen, but his imagination was going wild.
Rob on the other hand was getting cold feet. His father was ruthless, calculative and often unforgiving. That was what he remembered him as a child. He would be forced to run whenever he missed a combat maneuver, given half rations if he misstepped during an exercise, beaten to the ground by martial arts instructors that outclassed him, a thirteen year old at the time. He remembered his father as the man who did this to him, there was no telling what would happen and he only hope that if this meeting went wrong, Sean would be able to escape.
The boat’s engines slowed down, the whirring that they were making quieting and soon the ferry stopped. No one came and Sean and Rob looked at each other.
“I guess we should see what’s going on.” Rob got up and walked towards the door that would lead out to the main deck. He peaked out the window. The ramp was already set down to the dock and there were men and women in police officer uniforms waiting.
They stepped out and went down to the docks. They were wordlessly escorted away from the water and soon were walking between the old, decaying buildings of the prison that once held the most dangerous criminals in the country. Much of the prison was gated off with large iron fences, but a set of keys on a ring from the belt of one of the uniformed men opened those up and they were ushered into the building.
They walked down between long rows of cells, empty, rotted, only the toilet remaining. This was part of the prison that ordinary tourists didn’t see, it was hardly maintained.
“Where are they taking us?” Sean whispered as if they guards that were all around them couldn’t here him.
“Somewhere where we can’t be spied on.” Rob answered and Sean took it for a good enough answer. He didn’t actually know for certain, but there was no other reason to take them so far into the building other than that. The news helicopters must have had them on edge. If the Inquisition could get uniforms, that were probably straight from the police station, then their enemies, whoever they were, could get a news helicopter.
Two long minutes later and they were in front of a door that led to solitary confinement room. Instead of a single metal toilet that most of the other rooms had, this one had a single table with two chairs and a small, modern light overhead to replace the old bulb that wouldn’t have worked.
They went inside and once again, waited.
“Why do I get the feeling that we’re not getting out of this.” Sean walked around the room, the door had been closed behind them, but not locked. He inspected the walls since there was nothing else to inspect and even went as far as smelling them. He found the smell, dull and uninteresting, the room was dull and uninteresting.
“We’ll be fine.” Rob tried to assure his touchy friend. He sat in the chair and wondered if one of them would stand since there was only two chairs. “If they wanted to hurt us, we would know.” He never knew the Inquisition to beat around the bush.
“Sure.” Sean said unconvinced. He was ready to change at a moments notice, even if it took about a full minute to do so. He ignored that, he would fight out despite only having experience sparring against Taima and always losing. “We’re deep in a prison, on an island full of armed guards. We’ll be just fine.”
“Just…” Rob huffed. “Just settle down. I’m never going to understand you werewolves, so bipolar at time.” He thought of the two werewolves that they had run across earlier in the day. The large one, Dmitri had been ready to rip his throat out when he had caught him staring.
He knew they were werewolves mostly by Dmitri’s extremely protective mannerism towards the smaller one, Trevor. The way he always put himself between Trevor and anyone who he might perceive as a threat. Even when he had settle down, he kept himself between Trevor and the rest of them.
Trevor on the other hand was mostly silent, only occasionally talking, the obvious submissive one of the two.
That along with the usual awkwardness that werewolves tended to have were key give aways to Rob who was trained to be able to spot a werewolf in public. They were werewolves or just some random people who were just strange, it was San Fransisco after all.
“I have spent my life trying to figure out the same thing.” A voice pierced the cell and the door opened. A older man in a pair of cowboy boots and a leather vest walked in. He looked at the two and they looked back. “No hello for your dear old dad?” He raised and eyebrow.
“Hello.” Rob said, leaving out the ‘dad.’ His father noticed, but didn’t make a fuss out of it.
“I was a little surprised when I heard that you brought someone with you.” He looked at the single available chair. “Would have brought an extra.”
“Enough small talk.” Rob interrupted, already old feelings were starting to bubble up.
“Not much of a reunion.” Rob’s father mumbled and sat down, leaving Sean standing, though he didn’t mind. He was too focused on trying to get a read on this old man who was doing a half decent job at making his outfit work for him.
“I only came out of the dark because I knew that if you found me first…” Rob leaned forward, staring at the man who he only shared blood with and nothing else. “You send your goons to take me.”
“I won’t lie, that was my first thought.” Rob’s father admitted. “But, that would get us nowhere. This here is hardly getting us anywhere at the moment, do I guess there is no need for small talk.” He gave Sean a quick sideways glance. “Is the reason why, after so many years, you decided to reach out have to do with this wolf right here?”
Rob looked over at Sean whose pupils had already changed from brown to yellow. They didn’t know that Sean was a werewolf and here, surrounded by people who hunted werewolves, it suddenly felt very much like a trap.
“Oh, don’t look at me with those eyes like that.” Rob’s father grinned. You don’t get to be a Caughey and a Director at the same time to without being able to pick out the small details. “You’re in no danger, but this does bring and interesting opportunity for us.”
Rob was on guard. His eyes shifted to the door. He could easily get past his father if he needed to, the man was old, a little above sixty if Rob remembered right. From there he could take the two guards outside and take their weapons, after that, a fight to outside where the camera’s would be on them and prevent further conflict where they would be able to take the ferry. For now, he took his father’s word, he remembered him as being ruthless, but never once did his father lie to him.
“What opportunity?” Rob asked, afraid to know.
“The Inquisition isn’t doing too good…” He thought for a moment. “Actually, it’s doing shit and I’m afraid that it won’t be long before it’s completely gone.”
“So.” Rob shrugged and folded his arms across the chest. He didn’t like this. He hadn’t had the opportunity to ask about Taima and her pack. He came here to try and guarantee their safety once the Inquisition found out about them.
“So…” Director Caughey repeated. “I want out.”
“Out?”
“Out. No point on staying on a sinking ship.”
“Then just go then.” Rob cold see his father, with his resources being able to simply fade away and leave.
“I would, but there is a single loose strand that needs to be taken care of and I need your help sniping that thread off.” He sat up right in his chair and took a very business appearance his his hands crossed and resting on the table. “I need to get in contact with some very special people, people that, if I approached would most likely kill me. So I need you to make contact.”
“What are you talking about?” Rob was confused. His father had turned the entire meeting around on him, leaving Rob desperate to keep up with it. “What people.”
“My men have been tracking some werewolves in the city, I don’t know why they’re here or what they plan on doing, but I do know that they have the ability to remove this thread for me.”
“I can’t just do this for you, whatever this is.” Rob said.
“No unless I do something for you?”
“We don’t want you people coming to our homes.” Sean finally cut in. He had been watching from the sideline and now thought that it was time for him to have some input. The two turned to listen. “I don’t know a whole lot about this Inquisition, or what exactly it does, but I’ve heard enough to know that you don’t like my kind and will do whatever you can to kill us. If we do this for you, you need to ensure that your men never come after us, or anyone we may know.”
Director Caughey raised an eyebrow. “I can do you one better. If this works out, I can gaurantee that my sector of the Inquisition won’t ever bug werewolves again because I mean it when I say that I’m trying to get out.”
Sean looked at Rob. It sounded good and all they had to do was go talk to some werewolves in the city. They already had a sneaking suspicion that they already had met them earlier in the day.
“Deal.”
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