Life With A Werewolf

Coda Part 3 - Opening Salvo

         The picnic basket sat in the back seat, jostling around as I drove into work. Normally, I don't drive into work in the evening. Boss likes to keep me working the normal day shift, preferably afternoons. After all, it's when they get the most calls from humans. Who better to talk to a human than another human? It's also how they can keep me on part time. Besides, most of the excitement is at night, and in general, they like to keep the human away from that. Not because I can't handle it. But because, I suspect, they think I'll be too likely to jump in and assist.
         After the threat we'd gotten from the royal inbred, I figured they'd need me that evening. Besides, I still had to inform boss that we were going to be at war. Which turned out to be a useless gesture. From the state of the office, he already knew. And had a good idea who the war was against.
         When I'd gotten there, all hell had not quite broken loose. Not yet. But it had sawed through the bars and was lowering the makeshift rope out the side window of it's jail cell.
         The phone was ringing off the hook. Boss had shifted in office and was in full werebear mode. I brought the picnic basket in to his office, and began to explain. "It's what's left of..."
          "Put it in the back," he snarled, cutting me off. "We'll contact his family tomorrow. Crash has already been in one fight, and I got to go assist before he gets himself killed."
         I set the picnic basket on the table in the break room, not knowing what else to do with it. After all, we didn't exactly have a morgue attached to our building or anything. And there wasn't much of a risk of anyone looking inside it. No one was going to get time to eat that night.
         In hindsight, I suppose I should had felt something off. All I knew was that it had some heft to it. There was so much going on at the time, that I didn't have a lot of time to diagnose where that heft was coming from. If I had, I'd have noticed how the weight felt weird. Perhaps I'd have taken a different action than setting it on a table at the rear of the building.
          Instead, I sat down at a cubicle and began fielding some of the saddest calls I'd received in my short time on the job. There was three werewolves alright. They were tearing a line of destruction through the county. They had started with idle threats. Explaining that they were the new law in town, and that every mythical had to either get with the program, leave, or die. Some of the ones who refused were already being made examples of.
          Werewolves got special treatment. Either pledge allegiance to the Nobility or suffer the consequences. I wasn't certain to the condition of Crash. He can't exactly carry a cell phone in that condition. After all, where would he put it? He also wouldn't be able to answer it if he did. We had our own system, but I'd have to wait for Crash to do a check in. Since boss was already on his way to him, that meant Crash had just checked in. So, his next check could be anywhere from two hours away to sunrise.
          Thinking on that lead me to another line of thought between calls. The trail of destruction from the three impostors was going to run foul of the police sooner or later. That would turn bloody most likely, due to the trio not recognizing the authority of the police. Even Crash and the office recognized their authority over certain aspects. They only intervened when it was obvious the law would die if they tried investigating.
          If the police were murdered by werewolves working for the county, wouldn't that cause those in power to want answers? To desire a change in leadership, or at least a change of affiliation? How much political pressure would it take after that to force a change? Wars are won on two fronts after all: logistically and politically.
         Crash and the rest of us would suddenly start talking about how nice Mexico sounded about this time of year if things went that way. And they certainly could. It was a political power play with the added benefit of bloodshed and payback for the Nobility. They could in the end pin the entire thing on me, and say that I wanted the war in the first place. After all, less than an hour prior I had called his entire lineage inbred half a dozen different times in the span of thirty seconds.
          Boss was already out the door. Crash was on patrol. Things were getting more hectic out there. In our office there was three other individuals working that night. Every one of them had asked not to be included in the blog when I was hired. I've respected their wishes up until now, and won't violate them after everything that had occurred.
         I've been told that things aren't my fault. I don't have the equipment for indepth detection like boss or Crash. They had taken measures to avoid detection, and besides, it's not like silver has a strong scent. Sometimes, you just get tricked. I'd been tricked. But tricked or no, you just don't get over making a mistake that big.
         At that moment in time, I was more focused on the trail of destruction the three werewolves were causing. It wasn't accidental or chosen at random. There was a deliberate trail being drawn through, one that had been picked out weeks ago.
         Noticing the trend, I asked the others to hold the phones for a bit while I grabbed the map to start tracking these calls and see where they were going. It took me about four minutes to find the cork board. Luckily it already had a map tacked onto it. Apparently the boards sole mission was to hold that map, something it had done skillfully for many years.
         Tracking the destruction was easy. One trail followed a creek in the south, where a family was threatened. A werewolf who vowed to die rather than join was killed and his head impaled on a stick in the front yard. An old punishment from the Nobility's reign of terror in Europe. Then it traveled north.
         Another came in from the northeast and was traveling south. A family of vampires had been threatened. Vampires believe in the long game when it came to such wars and simply agreed to move for now. Then they called us. If we didn't act, I'm certain there would be revenge within twenty to forty years, and it would be brutal and difficult to deal with. After them was a minotaur couple who was told to move or become hamburger. Then one very familiar hulderfolk family was attacked.
         The trail of destruction traveled southeast and crossing into every major community they could. They weren't being silent about things. They were threatening families in communities in the evening light, no less. The sun had barely crossed the horizon when I'd came in.
         Which gave credence to my theory. They wanted everyone to know. They wanted the uproar, the chaos. Regular people rightfully scared not understanding what a werewolf or a mythical was would start trying to defend their families believing monsters had come to life. The mythicals would start defending themselves and...
         It would become Doveland 2.0. The Nobility could sweep in and take over. Not only the werewolf community, but politically, socially, every facet of society almost. It was brilliant. It was destructive. It was horrifying.
         "Everyone shut up for a moment," I shouted, walking over to the board. The board had been pushed towards the front near the door where everyone could see it. The three individuals all reluctantly hung up their phones and stood. They looked at me impatiently.
         "I think I know what they're doing," I began.
          Boom!
         The explosion ripped through the office from the break room. The bomb planted in the picnic basket had went undetected. All I knew was I was going to talk. Then there was an explosion. And then there was darkness.