Ivan stared at the words ‘Andrey Piotrowski’ shimmering in gold, cursive lettering plastered on his father's office door. He glanced around him to see if anyone would be passing by anytime soon before pressing his ear to the door.

  Inside the room, he could hear his father's muffled voice talking with someone else. A man. He could only hear his dad's voice because of how loud he was speaking, but the other man was unintelligible, his words coming out only as choppy strings of dialogue.

  “They found the source of the smell.”

  “Look, Andrey….”

  “It's the conduit. It's been activated.”

  “... attacks…witches… “

  “.....leave us vulnerable…. decaying”

  “We don't know for sure. They still need to do a preliminary autopsy… council…..”

  The words trailed off and the room grew quiet. The silence was followed by his dad's heavy footsteps growing closer to the door.

  Ivan slowly backed away from the door, and when he was sure he was far enough, he quickly rushed down the hallway and around the corner, sitting on the bench where his dad had sternly told him to “not fucking move” twenty minutes earlier.

  Loud voices filled the hallway, followed by the loud bang of the office door. When his dad finally emerged from behind the wall, a scowl crossed his face and he pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling deeply.

  He turned down, and when he saw Ivan, he glanced at him with an irritated scowl “Why are you just sitting there. Move!” He yelled in Russian. He glanced at the wall clock just above Ivan's head and shook his head. “We're already late enough.”

  When they got into the car, his dad began driving, exiting out of the parking space behind the back house.

  After a few minutes of driving in silence, he saw his dad turn to him briefly from the corner of his eye. “There's been something going on in the pack. They think it has to do with the conduit.”

  Ivan frowned in feigned surprise, glancing away from his father. Before today, he hadn't heard about the conduit since he was twelve, when his mom had told him that it hadn't been active in over 200 years. “What about it?”

  “You know the smell that people have been complaining about recently?”

  Ivan nodded. It had been developing for the past few days and both his and Leo's packs had immediately filed a complaint to the mayor. The mayor had just ruled it a problem with the sewage system, and because human senses weren't as acute as werewolves’, the council eventually dismissed the issue altogether. Ivan knew that this day would come eventually, but why did it need to be so soon? And why now of all times?

  “Well, there have been a few recent cases of dead animals on the pack lands. Both ours and the Dark Moons.”

  Ivan paused and inhaled a discreet breath, watching the window by his cheek turn cloudy when he blew out again. “From what? I know there have been a couple of predators lately.”

  He resisted the urge to ask any more questions, ignoring the itch of curiosity inside of him that was begging to be scratched. Dead animals weren't a concern — animals died every day in the pack — you didn't call meetings for a few dead squirrels.

  He needed to know how much they already knew. If they were having meetings it meant that they knew something. But he already sounded too interested, he was supposed to hate witches.

  “They are saying they think it's those witches.” His dad snarled, “There was a coven that lived nearby long before you were born.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Ivan could hear the hint of disgust that laced his father's words. He drew two dots in the fading mist on the window and added a downward arch under the dots, then quickly wiped the frowny face with the corner of his jacket sleeve.

  “So you think that they might be back?” Ivan asked in English, staring at the side of his dad's face.

  His dad nodded grimly. “I need to show you something.” His dad answered, now also speaking English.

  They continued driving in silence. When they had been driving for a few minutes, his dad put on the blinkers and turned off the main road into the forest. They stopped the car when they approached a tall, metal gate with two guard posts on either side.

  Ivan had grown up being constantly told that this was a forbidden part of the forest, and that only certain werewolves were allowed to enter, and that the security was so strong that this was the only entrance and exit. But there were other ways.

  One of the guards from the guard station walked up to the car and his dad rolled down the window. They talked for a few minutes. When they were done, he told them that they had to leave the car where it was and then the guard grabbed something that Ivan had heard of but never seen before. An Authentication Stone. The stone was big, a little bigger than his palm and its surface was smooth and looked metallic. They were doing identity tests.

  Ivan watched with interest as his dad's incisors elongated into those of a wolf. He bit into his hand, drawing up a small dot of blood and pressed the stone into the blood. The stone suddenly lit up with a bright blue light, when Ivan looked closer, he could see that it wasn't just the whole stone glowing. The lights were made up from a meticulous arrangement of circles and lines that connected to form an intricate and beautiful pattern all around the stone. The blood on the stone began to move, slotting into the lines until each line was red. When there was no longer any blue left, the light vanished and the stone returned to normal.

  They got out of the car and his dad led him through the gate and down a narrow path further into the woods.

  As they walked, the canopy grew thicker and the sunlight diminished with each step. Ivan thought they would reach complete darkness, but his dad put a hand up and they stopped walking.

  Ivan glanced down at the ground in confusion. Then he saw where his dad had pointed and froze. He didn't remember it looking this bad.

  In the clearing beside them, the entire forest floor was almost completely covered in a grotesque scene of bloody rabbits, deer and birds strewn all over the floor.

  “The Elders think that the witches have been sneaking onto the pack to do some rituals.” His dad gestured to the animals in disgust. “And that the conduit has been reactivated because of it.”

  Ivan had seen that look of disgust hundreds of times before. Not disgust at the decaying cadavers surrounding them but at the thought that witches and wizards had even dared to step onto their land.

  Ivan glanced at his dad in surprise. The conduit was the pack's main source of power. It held the power from their ancestors that had been buried in the pack lands for hundreds of years. The power of thousands of werewolves that had lived before them. But their conduit hadn't been active in 200 years

  If it was activated, it meant that the pack was becoming more powerful. The more power they had, the more people would try to take that power away. And they weren't ready.

  “I'll be back.” His dad said in Russian then walked back through into the forest, following the same route they had come through.

  Ivan watched him leave, then turned back to the animals. He studied them for a few seconds, then he noticed the runes.

  Runes were complex, intricate symbols that appeared on spelled objects or people and were used to uniquely identify each witch or wizard with magic. And each rabbit held the exact same one. A clear indication that this had been done by only one witch or wizard.

  Ivan knew that they hadn't seen the runes yet. The marks were small and most of them were buried under a layer of sludgy, blood-soaked fur, which made them even harder to see.

  If they knew that a coven hadn't been responsible, they probably would've already been working on tracking down and killing that one witch or wizard. But covens were different. You couldn't just go in blind. You needed a strategy. You needed time. He needed time.

  Ivan knelt down next to the rabbits closest to him and hovered a hand over the corpse. He took a deep breath, then after a few seconds, he felt a familiar buzzing sensation spreading throughout his body and then pulsating at the very end of his fingers, following the steady flow of his heartbeat.

  A faint blue glow stuck to the surface of his skin as the runes on the rabbits all began to twist. The pungent smell of burning fur filled the air as the runes morphed into different shapes until all of them had been completely changed.

  Ivan removed his hand and stood, a wave of dizziness suddenly flooding his body.

  His dad emerged from behind some trees and gestured that it was time to go. Ivan nodded.

  When his dad turned to leave once again, he leaned into the bushes beside him and puked.