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The silence in the church library was deeper than before, a palpable weight that had settled in the wake of their victory. It wasn't a peaceful quiet; it was the silence of exhaustion, of adrenaline receding, leaving behind the raw, unvarnished aftermath.
Jack stood by the large lead-framed window, his back to the room. He was in his human form, dressed in simple, dark clothes, but the tension in his broad shoulders had not eased. On the oak desk behind him, two objects sat side-by-side, representing the two poles of his existence: the inert, silver data drive containing the blueprint of his curse, and the pulsating lunar crystal, now contained within a lead-lined box that did little to muffle its eerie, silver glow.
Elsa was cleaning her weapons with a methodical, almost ritualistic intensity. The sharp scent of gun oil mixed with the older smells of dust and paper. Morbius stood near the shelves, not reading, simply existing in the stillness, a pale sentinel in the dim light.
"We handed Thorne over to the C-Sec division at Langley," Elsa said, breaking the silence without looking up. "He's their problem now. He'll spend the rest of his life in a concrete box, trying to explain thaumaturgical resonance to psychiatrists."
Jack didn't turn. "He was a symptom. Not the disease."
"We know," Morbius intoned softly. "The funding, the resources, the initial research... it did not originate with him. He was a brilliant implement, but someone else wielded him."
"That's the real threat," Jack said, his voice low. He finally turned from the window. His face was drawn, the shadows under his eyes pronounced. The physical wounds had healed, but the spiritual fatigue was immense. "We stopped one lab. We have no idea how many others are out there. How many other 'Thornes' are looking at me, at my blood, as the key to their grand design."
He walked to the desk and picked up the lead-lined box. A sliver of silver light escaped from a seam, casting a shifting line across his face. He could feel its pull, a constant, low-level hum that resonated in his teeth and bones. It was a temptation and a taunt.
"This crystal... it's a focus. A battery. It proves they can capture, store, and weaponize the very thing that controls me." He looked at Elsa, his expression grim. "What's to stop them from building a bigger one? A network of them? They could turn an entire city into a full-moon trap."
Elsa met his gaze. "Then we find them. We dismantle them. Just like we did this one."
"It's not that simple," Jack said, a rare edge of frustration in his tone. "I can't fight a war on every front. I can't be looking over my shoulder for the next scientist with a capture jar while also trying to stop whatever new monster crawls out of the shadows." He set the box down with a definitive thud. "I need to be smarter. I can't just be the weapon they see me as. I have to be the strategist they never see coming."
A new resolve was hardening in his eyes, born from the ashes of the recent battle. The reactive hero was receding; the proactive protector was emerging.
"Morbius," Jack said, turning to the vampire. "You have contacts in the hidden places. The black markets, the information brokers who deal in the unnatural. I need you to put out feelers. Anyone looking to buy or sell advanced thaumaturgical components, anyone whispering about lycanthropic research. I want to know who the next Thorne is before he builds his lab."
Morbius gave a slow, deliberate nod. "It shall be done. The whispers of the underworld often reach undead ears first."
"Elsa," Jack continued, his focus shifting to her. "Your family has been hunting things like me for centuries. Your archives, your bestiaries... they must have records. Not just of werewolves, but of attempts to control them. Of alchemists, mad scientists, cults. I need to know the history of this... this desire to own what I am. The past might tell us where the next attack is coming from."
Elsa didn't argue. She simply nodded, a hunter acknowledging a sound tactical decision. "The Bloodstone archives are extensive. And irritatingly disorganized. But I'll find what you need."
This was the new front. Not just fists and fangs, but information and foresight. Jack Russell was no longer just battling his curse; he was building a fortress of knowledge around it.
He looked down at the glowing box, then at the data drive.
"They want to weaponize the beast?" he murmured, more to himself than to them. "Then I'll weaponize the man."
The decision was a pebble dropped into the still pond of their existence, and the ripples began immediately. Morbius melted into the pre-dawn gloom, a whisper bound for the city's underworld of information. Elsa departed soon after, her destination the ancient, fortified manor of the Bloodstones, a place filled with as many dark secrets as it was with monster trophies.
Left alone in the cavernous silence of the library, Jack felt the weight of the quiet. It was different now. Before, it was a shield. Now, it felt like the calm before a storm he couldn't yet see. The two artifacts on the desk seemed to pulse with their own energy, the data drive a cold, dead threat, the crystal a live, seductive one.
He approached the lead-lined box. Even through the dense metal, the lunar energy called to him. It was a dangerous, foolish idea, one that went against every instinct of self-preservation he possessed. But the old way—hiding, reacting—had left him vulnerable. To fight a new kind of enemy, he needed a new kind of strength. He needed to understand the weapon they intended to use against him.
With a slow, deliberate breath, he flipped the latch and opened the box.
The silver light erupted, painting the shelves of books in stark, shifting relief. The hum was no longer a distant vibration; it was a physical pressure in the room, a thrumming that resonated deep within his marrow. The beast in his blood didn't just stir; it sat up and took notice, its full attention fixed on the glowing prize.
This is a mistake, a sane part of his mind whispered.
This is control, the hunter in him countered.
He didn't transform. He wouldn't give the beast that much leverage. Instead, he reached out a human hand, his fingers hovering just inches from the crystal's pulsating surface. The energy washed over his skin, a sensation like static electricity combined with a profound, primal familiarity. It was the scent of the hunt, the feeling of the open run under the moon, the raw power of the change—all distilled into a single, intoxicating point.
He focused, not on resisting it, but on analyzing it. He let the energy flow into him, not to trigger a transformation, but to map its pathways. He felt how it sought the latent lycanthropic code in his cells, how it buzzed around the edges of his consciousness, looking for a weakness, a hook to pull the beast forward.
His breathing remained steady, a metronome against the crystal's chaotic song. A fine sweat broke out on his brow. This was a tighter leash than he had ever held. This was walking up to the edge of the abyss and staring into it, demanding to know its depth.
He pushed further, concentrating on the memory of Thorne's command signal—the invasive, needle-like pain. He let the crystal's energy amplify that memory, recreating the echo of that violation within his own mind. It was agony, a psychic screech that made his teeth ache. But within that pain, he found a pattern. A frequency. A specific, brutal harmony designed to overwhelm the will.
There, he thought, locking onto the sensation. That's the weapon. That's what I have to learn to shield against.
He held the position for a moment longer, a man balancing on a high wire over a churning sea of his own inner monster. Then, with a final, shuddering exhale, he slammed the lid of the box shut.
The light and the hum vanished, plunging the library back into its familiar gloom. Jack staggered back a step, bracing himself against the desk. His heart hammered against his ribs, and his body trembled with the aftershocks of the energy and the immense effort of will. The scent of his own fear-sweat was sharp in the air.
But in his eyes, there was no regret. Only a hard-won, dangerous knowledge.
He now knew the exact frequency of the leash his enemies wanted to use. And to a creature born of defiance, a leash was just a thing to be broken.
The aftershocks of the crystal's energy took nearly an hour to fully fade from his system. Jack sat on the floor, his back against a bookshelf, focusing on the mundane scents of leather and dust to re-anchor himself in reality. The dangerous experiment had been necessary, but it had cost him. It was like staring directly into the sun; the afterimage was burned onto his soul.
As the last tremors subsided, a new scent reached him, carried on a draft from the library's main entrance. It was faint, buried under layers of city grime and distance, but unmistakable.
Ozone. Not the sharp, technological ozone of shattered electronics, but a wilder, more ancient kind. The scent of a storm gathering. And beneath it, the subtle, coppery tang of spilled blood.
His head snapped up. This wasn't a memory. This was happening now, somewhere in the city. It was a scent that spoke of raw, untamed magic, the kind that didn't come from a machine. The kind that predated labs and data drives.
He was on his feet in an instant, the fatigue forgotten, replaced by a hunter's urgency. He didn't have Elsa's resources or Morbius's underworld contacts, but he had this. He was a compass needle for the supernatural, and something had just jerked him hard to the north.
He moved to the map of LA still pinned to the corkboard. His eyes scanned the northern districts, his mind filtering the city's noise, triangulating the scent. It was diffuse, spread over a wide area, but the epicenter was clear.
"The Sepulveda Basin," he murmured. A vast, mostly wild parkland in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, a place of reclaimed riverbeds and dense wildlife. The perfect place for something to hide. Or to be summoned.
This was it. The first ripple from the pebble he had dropped. While he was contemplating his war against science, the old, magical world was already stirring. Thorne's defeat had created a vacuum, a power imbalance in the city's hidden ecosystem. And nature, supernatural or otherwise, abhors a vacuum.
He grabbed the lead-lined box containing the crystal. It was a risk to take it with him, but a greater risk to leave it unguarded. He strapped it into a rugged backpack, the faint hum against his spine a constant, grim reminder of the stakes.
He paused only to scribble a single, stark note on a piece of paper, leaving it in the center of the desk where Elsa or Morbius would find it.
Gone HUNTING. North. Something's bleeding.
Then, he slipped out of the library into the pale light of dawn. The city was waking up, oblivious to the shadows that danced at the edges of its vision. Jack Russell moved through the early morning crowds, a solitary figure with the weight of two wars on his shoulders. One was against the future, against the men who sought to cage his nature in steel and data.
The other was against the past, against the ancient things that were now, once again, stirring in the dark.
And he was the only thing standing in the middle.
The Sepulveda Basin was a lung of wildness in the city's concrete body, but as Jack moved into its depths, he found it was sick. The usual chorus of birds and insects was muted, replaced by a tense, waiting silence. The air, thick with the smell of damp earth and eucalyptus, was soured by the same ozone and blood scent that had called him here. It was stronger now, a metallic tang that coated the back of his throat.
He followed the trail, his human form moving with a predator's silence. He found the first sign a half-mile in: a circle of flattened grass, stained black with dried blood. The energy here was chaotic, violent. This wasn't a natural predator's kill. This was a ritual site. The spilled blood was a offering, a battery.
And it was recent. Less than an hour old.
A low growl rumbled in his chest, purely instinctual. He was too late to stop the ritual, but whatever it had summoned was likely still close. He pushed deeper, the backpack with the crystal a heavy, humming weight, a dangerous spark in a forest growing ripe for a wildfire.
The trees thinned, opening into a clearing dominated by the crumbling concrete supports of an old, abandoned flood control channel. And there, in the center of the clearing, stood the source of the disturbance.
It was a creature of nightmare and misaligned parts. It stood on four legs like a stag, but its body was covered in iridescent, chitinous plates instead of fur. Its head was a distorted, almost canine skull with too many eye sockets, some glowing with a sickly green light, others dark and empty. From its back sprouted vestigial, leathery wings that twitched and spasmed uncontrollably. It was a thing that should not exist, a magical construct, a golem of flesh and unstable energy, already beginning to fray at the edges. It was in clear, agonizing pain, its form shimmering, pieces of it dissolving into motes of green light only to reform a moment later.
It was a scout. A failed, unstable prototype, sent through a rift that had already collapsed behind it.
The creature's multiple eyes locked onto Jack. It let out a sound that was part screech, part gurgle, and charged. It wasn't an attack of malice, but one of blind, dimensional agony.
Jack didn't have time to transform. He dropped the backpack and met the charge, sidestepping and driving his shoulder into the creature's flank. The impact was like hitting a slab of rock. The creature twisted, a barbed tail Jack hadn't seen lashing out and tearing through his shirt, drawing a line of fire across his ribs.
He grunted, the pain sharp and clean. This was a fight he understood. A physical threat. He rolled with the motion, coming up with a heavy branch in his hands, swinging it like a club against the creature's leg. The chitin cracked, and the thing stumbled, screeching.
But as it fell, its many eyes fixed not on Jack, but on the backpack he had dropped. On the lead-lined box within. The creature's form stabilized for a brief moment, the chaotic energy around it calming, drawn to the potent, structured lunar power of the crystal.
It wasn't attacking him. It was drawn to the energy. It was a moth to a flame, seeking a stable power source to anchor its disintegrating form.
In that moment of understanding, Jack saw it. This wasn't an invasion. It was a desperate refugee. A thing torn from its home and dying in a world it wasn't meant for.
The creature made a final, lurching scramble toward the backpack.
Jack moved to intercept, but he was a second too slow. The creature's distorted muzzle nudged the backpack, and a sliver of silver light escaped the imperfect seal.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The lunar energy, pure and potent, acted like a catalyst on the creature's unstable magical core. The thing froze, its form glowing from within. Then, with a silent, concussive WHOMP of displaced air, it exploded. Not into gore, but into a shower of fading green and silver light, leaving behind only the scent of ozone and a scorched circle on the ground.
Silence returned to the clearing, deeper and more profound than before.
Jack stood alone, his chest heaving, the cut on his ribs already knitting closed. He looked at the scorched earth, then at the backpack. The crystal's light had faded back to its contained pulse.
This changed everything. The threat wasn't just from human ambition anymore. His world was colliding with something else, something vast and dimensional. The crystal wasn't just a weapon against him; it was a beacon. And he was carrying it.
He picked up the backpack, the hum against his spine now feeling less like a tool and more like a target.
The first part of his journey was over. The battle against Promethean was won. But as he stood in the silent clearing, the hair on his arms standing on end from the residual magic, he knew one thing for certain.
The Scent of Moonlight was gone. Now, he was breathing the air of a much larger, much darker world.
To Be Continue...