The Demon's Way

I don’t know when everything went to hell. I don’t know how the slayers’ council let everything get out of hand. I’d heard, through sparse phone calls to Willow, that something big was happening with one of the master vampires. The council was worried that he was getting too old and too crazy to keep control of his minions and the other vampires and that a war between vampire lineages could break out, but Willow hadn’t seemed worried. Buffy had taken care of everything else, right? How could one little vampire war stop her?

But somehow, I kind of think it did. In the months following that conversation, I started noticing that the demons were getting more aggressive, and the vampires were getting more numerous. It wasn’t noticeable to humans at all, but a werewolf’s keen sense of smell let me see a lone demon where everyone else just saw a human. Soon, I was seeing lone demons surrounded by humans, and then groups of demons amongst groups of humans, and then eventually groups of demons surrounding lone humans. I tried to convince the human to come away, when I could, but without sounding crazy there wasn’t too much I could do. When push came to shove, I was no match for a bunch of demons. Hell, with my size and stature, I was barely a match for a lone demon. So if the human wouldn’t be convinced away from his or her death, most of the time all I could do was watch.

But maybe that was my mistake. Maybe too much watching and not enough fighting was what caused my whole problem. Eventually, you see, the demons stopped hunting the guests and the groupies, and went after my band. I tried to stop them. I let the beast out, but it was no match for them. The wolf howled and fought, because it thought of the band as its pack, but it was no use.

I was badly wounded when I finally managed to get away. Some scratches to my back were painful and bled profusely, but I was really worried about the gouge to my knee and a few deep scratches to my stomach. I had an apartment only a few blocks away and I managed to limp to it, but when I got there it had been trashed and smelled of demons. Maybe someone in the band had led the demons there, or maybe they’d tried to follow me to tie up the lose end, but whatever the reason everything I owned was suddenly gone. Even the tour van had been destroyed. With no money, no allies close by, a wounded leg, and the threat of demons following me, I let the wolf take over, and slipped into the shadows.

I think some of it must have been shock. I’ve noticed before that the wolf has an easier time taking control when I’m confused or upset. I think mentally I just wanted to hide from what had happened, from what I’d allowed to happen. My band had been my family, and now I was alone.

I spent a few days hiding in the sewers and trying to heal the wound on my leg. My back became infected and I became feverish. By the time I had mostly healed, I was weak from sickness and hunger, and the wolf realized that I needed a pack or I probably wouldn’t survive.
But entering a wolf pack is never an easy thing, especially a werewolf pack. If you aren’t family, then you often have to fight for entrance into the pack, and even then you must work your way up from the bottom. For someone of my size, it was nearly impossible to get to the top of the pack. Only my wits would lend me any kind of upward motion in the pack hierarchy, and even that was little to none because intelligence wasn’t highly prized among werewolves.

In the past, I’d used this fact to my advantage. It had been far easier to keep the werewolf in me from wanting to join a pack where it would always be right on the edge of being kicked out than in a pack where he would be a strong member. Now, though, the werewolf was dominating the human, and it wanted a pack no matter what, so it found the nearest one, fought through a few of the lesser wolves, and made a large show of submission to the dominant male.

I’d never had much experience with the werewolf packs. Since the day I’d found out about being a werewolf, my focus was on ignoring or suppressing its instincts. So, when I finally got in the pack, I was in no way prepared for it. I didn’t know about all the biting and licking that was going on. I didn’t understand why I was laying on my belly just so the larger wolf could grab my neck in his jaws. I didn’t understand why I would stay near the pack when it fed me little and only when there was extra, and then stole what I had hunted when there was no other food. I didn’t understand why I tolerated the constant bites to my legs and arms. I didn’t understand, but I wasn’t in control so it really didn’t matter.

The other problem with being the smallest in the pack is that there’s very little you can do to protect yourself. As the lowest ranking and smallest pack member, I pretty much became the bitch of the larger males. Whenever they had a rough day or were just in a bad mood, they took it out on me. I was lucky enough to only be with the pack for a few weeks, because from the looks some of the larger males were giving me I was a little worried about what might happen if they got in a really bad mood. It wasn’t the right season for mating, and I’d already seen the alpha male satisfy himself with one of the other low ranking males. The coupling was harsh, brutal, and completed right in the middle of the pack, so everyone could watch. It was humiliating to the bottom, who yelped and shrieked from when he was entered until hours after he was released. It was so far from the little experience my human side had with sex, even homosexual sex, that it almost seemed like rape. To the wolf, though, there wasn’t anything wrong with it, and he was well aware that the same could easily happen to him. He’d try to get away from the pain, of course, but he would in the end bend to the will of the alpha.

The only good thing I found about this pack was that their leader never let them hunt humans. The pack spent more than half its time as wolves, and what little it spent as humans was always when they were resting in an abandoned building where they’d set up a kind of den. I found out after a while that the vampires in the area had formed a deal with the pack leader, which let the pack hunt in the surrounding woods as long as they left the humans for the vampires. For a time, the pack was happy with that, but eventually they got cocky and went hunting for humans. I stayed to the back, my human side having reemerged enough to be upset with the idea of killing people. So, from my vantage point at the rear of the group, I was able to watch a group of six or so vampires kill the alphas of the pack and capture the rest. I turned to run, but it was already too late and I was captured by the faster, stronger vampires.

That was the last I saw of my former pack, and while the wolf in me howled in disappointment, the reemerging human was at least pleased to see them go, although the situation I found myself in wasn’t much of a step up.