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Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

Of the god of earth and altar that our forefathers adored.

Though to last until that promised land is more'n I can afford

I'll last a little longer yet. On that you have my word.

The sun overhead was merciless and relentless and he paid it no mind.

The sands, tumbled with all manner of gravel and weed and long-forgotten fence fragments, stretched far away until they reached the shattered knees of the distant mountains. Northeast, he supposed by what the sun was doing to the back of his neck, but that was of no account. They were between him and where he was going, so they were what he faced, never you mind what the sun thought of it.

The faded sign by the highway's tar-weeping shoulder asked him "Where Will You Spend Eternity?"

He knew perfectly well.

But he suspected the ghost of the sign was only being rhetorical, so he didn't bother to answer. He had more important things to do with his answers. Later. Tomorrow, god willing, after he got past those mountains still tantalizing him in the distance. That maybe would mean walking through the mountains all night, but it wouldn't be the first time he'd done that.

He hummed to himself as he walked.

I have seen it in reflections of the mountains on the clouds.

I have felt it in the dance of ghosts among the lonely crowd.

I have tasted it in apple groves by terror's wing unbowed.

It is soft as distant thunder. It will soon be very loud.

On the other side of both the mountains and the night, he caught a ride.

The semi truck passenger seat was comfortable and probably would have smelled unfriendly to a human nose, but it was still heaven--well, as near to it as anything on this feeble earth could be, mustn't blaspheme--and he was weary to the roots of his soul. But he managed to talk a little with the trucker before sleep claimed him.

The trucker's name was Curtis.

Well, he said, it's nice to meet you Curtis.

How long had Curtis been on the road?

Why, Curtis had been on the road about five years now, for one company or another.

And had he ever seen anything powerful strange, out in the middle of nowhere, or felt as if there were a wilder, truer, more wondrous world around every corner, if only the way to enter it could be found? Yes, Curtis would allow as he'd seen a thing or two he couldn't rightly explain. "But mostly," and Curtis wanted to emphasize this, "I don't pay em no mind. I care about making runs on schedule, getting my shifts done, and not lettin the company find out if I do a hitchhiker or two a kindness from time to time, if you know what I mean."

He did know what Curtis meant. He took the hint and relaxed back in the seat, let the desert outside turn to plains, let the hum of wheels on highway lull him to sleep, let sleep show him the world he hoped for, the promised world, where he no more need hide or run, where all would be welcome because all had become One Pack, in his god's great mercy.

He slept the day, and the rest of New Mexico, away. The truck pulled up at a stop, in northern Texas according to Curtis. The night was already filled with cicadas and every sundog-bright halogen streetlight had its own powdery galaxy of moths.

"Welp," said Curtis, "This's where we part ways. I suppose you had some sorta sky-pilot pitch you wanted to make, but looked to me like you needed the sleep more. I guess I can give you a minute, if your conscience ain't gonna let you be on your way without at least taking a shot at me."

So he told the trucker. And the trucker listened, more politely than most, and when he got to the part about the bite his eyebrows went up, deftly, and he made a small noise in the back of his throat that might have been a laugh. But it would've been uncharitable to think Curtis was laughing at him, so he didn't.

Curtis didn't ask to be turned. That was ok. If he was meant to find his place in the pack--in this life, that is--then this conversation would be a seed of curiosity that would bear fruit, why, whenever Curtis next met a willing werewolf.

If not, if Curtis never did hear the call of the pack, at least it wouldn't be because nobody ever called to him.

He committed the matter of Curtis, of gratitude to him, and of his to-be-hoped-for coming to the pack to providence, with added thanks for sending the ride, and turned his face north, to the night and the highway once again.

It occurred to him that Curtis had never asked for his name.

Just as well. He wouldn't have known how to answer.

Mine eyes have read despair upon a thousand faces writ.

Mine ears have heard the silence and are more than sick of it.

My soul is wondrous weary of a world that's full of shit,

But it is not yet a quitter. For flames that it has lit,

The road he followed north turned east some time after midnight. That was fine. He trusted providence to bring him where he needed to be.

In a rest stop some ways west of Oklahoma City he ran into a werewolf family.

For flames that I must kindle on at least one pyre yet,

For things that I remember that mankind must not forget,

For love I must abandon for the things I'll never get,

I will endure. Mine eyes will see at least one more sunset.

You wouldn't have known to look at them, they all wore their masks well. Even the infant, screaming in mother's arms, why, nobody would have had any cause to suspect of being anything but human unless they looked very closely at the little teeth as it wailed, and wondered what a baby needed with such sharp canines.

He didn't need to look to know them. He could smell it plainly.

They smelled tired, and worried, and lost, but mostly they smelled of the wolf. Of the pack. Like a tiny foretaste of paradise, gone sour and stale through long neglect. Providence, clearly, had guided him to them to tell them to keep up their courage, the day of the great pack, when all wolfkind would be one family under an everlasting autumn sunset, was at hand. Maybe to help them, if he could.

He watched them. A man, two women, a child, an infant. A car just a little bit too small and just a little bit too old. A conversation over a payphone, the kind where you're swallowing all the anger you can to keep it from showing up in your voice. He couldn't hear from here, not over the roar of the interstate, and his ears weren't what they'd once been. But he didn't need to hear the specifics, he knew too many variations of the story already. The jobs that paid, that lasted, that didn't screw you over, those were too close to the cities, or the suburbs. Had too many prying eyes. Not safe for a werewolf, especially not one with a family and children to worry about. That left packs drifting, chasing jobs that vanished like water-shadows in the highway heat as soon as you got close, and took hope with them. And without hope, what was there left to hold a pack together?

The man wasn't angry anymore, just listening to the phone, bitterly sullen, no longer answering. Possible the call might even have been hung up.

He made up his mind and approached the picnic table. One of the women, in the blue jeans, was trying to keep the kid occupied. The other, in the skirt, had managed to hush the baby.

He said hello. Didn't try to sit at the table. Watched them both pull their respective child closer as they straightened up. That was all right, they didn't have any reason to trust him yet.

So he made eye contact, smiled a trustworthy smile, and gave them one.

His brother--may his soul run free in the pack's endless wilderness--had come up with the trick. He called it the wolf wink. Had once done it right behind a B. of E.P.M. caseworker's back. It took practice, but once you learned it was as natural as breathing.

He shifted his eye, just his eye, from human brown to wolf gold. Held it a second so he was sure the mother in the skirt had seen, then let it slip back.

He saw her gasp, then relax. "Can I help you?" she said. Her voice was soft and tired beyond description.

No ma'am, he told her, I'm the one helping you. Did anyone ever tell you that you were part of something holy?

That drew some puzzled eyebrows, so he pressed on, in hopes momentum would carry away doubt. He told them about how the werewolf was the instrument of providence, here to undo the woe of the human world, and that a great pack was coming. He explained how the wolf-god had given the gift of the first bite to his human children so they wouldn't be left behind by their wolf siblings. As it was theirs, now, to give to humans who were worthy, who asked. Someday all the humans, one by one, would accept the Bite and join them, and there'd be one pack, and then there'd be peace.

He knew from experience it was a lot to hear all at once.

"Uh hello. Something wrong here, mister?" said the man returning from the phone.

No, he smiled, nothing wrong. You got a wonderful pack, he said. And it isn't fair the times you got to go through but you will get through them. There's a place in the Great Pack for you, one day. Here.

He dug in his dusty pocket and handed him a handful of bills. Hundreds, fifties, a twenty or two. Use them to get your pack where they need to be.

"I can't accept," the man sputtered.

He smiled back and said he thought the fella would find that he could. Wasn't like HE had any more use for the stuff. He'd left human things behind when he started this pilgrimage.

He left them at the picnic table, considerably more hopeful. He noticed the rings the women wore matched, the man's fingers were bare.

Huh. Hadn't suspected. Took all sorts to make a pack, he supposed, and there's more than just the wolf you can hide behind your human mask, if you need to.

He prayed for them as he walked north again through the plains.

The grapes of wrath are planted in the souls of all my tribe.

They are wet with silent weeping. They are watered deep inside.

I foretell a mighty harvest where the bones of saints abide.

For a harvest moon is rising and it brings a rising tide.

In Missouri he ran afoul of the law.

He was heading east, about half an hour past a town called Nevada, and wasn't that ironic considering where he'd started from? When he heard sirens. He jumped and stumbled, fell to his knees, and by the time he'd scrambled to his feet again the black and white sherrif's car had pulled in front of him and he had to shield his eyes from the lights, and there was a megaphone-distorted voice that demanded: "Sir what is your business here?"

Nothing, officer, he said, and in his mind he was praying frantically--oh Lord in the Uttermost West defend me in this hour of peril, be my safeguard Father of All Packs, or if this be my hour to come to thee let me be found worthy--but out loud he only said, I'm only walking officer, I hope I haven't offended anyone?

A hard-faced woman, tight blonde bun and disapproving lips in a crisp brown uniform, stalked toward him out of the painful burst of blue and red lights. "I need to see your ID," she sneered at him.

What for, officer, am I being arrested?

"I need to see your ID," she repeated, as if he hadn't said anything. So, with great disgust, he fished the card out of his wallet, the one that said a name he no longer recognized and a picture he knew was a mask, and handed it over. Because he could see she wasn't wearing a camera, her gun was on her hip, and he knew, even if she didn't, what would happen if she decided to use it.

She looked at the ID. Didn't give it back. Repeated the question, "What is your business in this area?"

I'm only passing through, officer, he said again, fighting to keep a grip on the panicking animal inside. Am I free to go?

"You were sighted passing by a school back in Nevada," she smelled like bleach and gunpowder and vulcanized rubber and he wanted to run.

Is that against the law, officer?

"Don't make smart remarks," she snapped, "I happen to care about the safety of the children of this community! First Fellowship Church reported a broken window this morning as well!"

He hadn't been anywhere near a church, he knew, and he suspected she wouldn't care, if he said so. The prayer in his mind changed--please let no one have reported the beast that stole a chicken from their coop this morning, let not my weakness of hunger have betrayed me, the young fella I talked to in the park, let him not have reported what I told him about the pack and the bite, let him have taken no offense at my offer of a place therein, let him not have borne witness to this the accuser into whose hands I am delivered--but all he said was that was a shame, he hoped it wouldn't happen again, but was he being arrested? Was he free to go?

She looked at him a long time, twisted one bootsole into the roadside gravel as if snuffing a cigarette. "I could take you in," she said, "for obstructing traffic on a highway."

The only car in any direction was the one blinding him with flashing lights. He said nothing.

"But you're headed out of my jurisdiction. So you keep walking, or the next time so much as a stick of chewing gum goes missing I know whose ass I'm busting for it."

He knew as well.

"Don't forget your ID." She shoved it into his hands, turned and stalked to the squad car.

He put his head down, started walking as fast as he could, and when he was sure he must be out of the jurisdiction he made himself walk just as far again before he stumbled off the road, collapsed to his knees, and through terrified tears gave thanks that she either hadn't noticed the little double "W" in the bottom corner of his ID, from the Bureau of Extrahuman Populace Management, or hadn't known what it meant.

Once the tears passed, he felt lighter. Cleansed. Like he'd left behind another burden, unneeded on this pilgrimage.

That's what it took, he said to himself.

Just deal with whatever griefs and sorrows you got, just press on through them, one foot in front of the other, he said to himself. What else was there to be done?

Press on, he said. Keep walking and you'll get past it, he said. And now he was past it, wasn't he? It couldn't hurt him any further. He was alright now, right?

Right?

It took a few tries to listen to himself.

For the harvest moon is rising and it brings a cleansing storm.

My nose has smelt the ozone as the thunderheads take form.

And the times, they are a-changing for the fat, for the forlorn

So you'd best be taking shelter, if you're meaning to keep warm.

Somewhere in the midst of the riverlands, he met a woman who didn't believe in werewolves.

He had wound up in a small riverside town, pleasant enough place. Big fiberglass statue of a fish and a row of spindly trees that would have been elms in the old days before the blight, but now they were just whatever had been leftover from the local nursery.

At the edge was a greyhound station. Well, a stop, really. There wasn't a building, just a bench outside a gas station, and even before the fullness of the wolf had been vouchsafed to him, he'd seen enough of these to know where the tickets would be: inside, behind the counter, above the scratch-off lottery selection and next to the cigarettes.

It'd be alright if he bought a ticket and rode a while, surely?

"Excuse me," said a woman as he turned to step inside, "do you have a moment to talk about the most important news you'll ever hear?"

He'd taught himself to expect a lot of things, when he started this journey, but he hadn't thought to anticipate this.

She was almost as old as he was, and had just stepped away from filling up her big white SUV. Her hair was bleached silvery white but her eyebrows were dark brown. She wore a fluffy sweatshirt that said 'STRONGER Than The AVERAGE MOM' with a tiny enamel American flag pinned to the collar. And by the time he'd found his footing and remembered how to say no thank you ma'am, I'm also trying to spread the word of- she had hurried through most of her pitch and was already to the part where she said "-and that's why it's so important that everyone accept Him as their Personal Savior, because otherwise these satanic sickos will have free reign to prey upon decent upright Americans like you and me! It's the only way we can protect our communities!"

The smell of gasoline blinding his nose had begun to give him a headache. He begged her pardon as politely as he could, but she wasn't listening.

"The forces of satanic might! Trying to take control of this nation!"

Oh dear.

"People get possessed by all sorts of demons!" she went on, feigning breathlessness, "demons of vaccination or homosexuality or witchcraft or even vampirism or lycanthropy!"

Oh noooo...

"Now I know that last one sounds crazy, but of course they can't interfere with God's perfect design, so nobody actually ever turns into a wolf! But the demon that has these poor degenerates in thralldom makes them think they do!"

Oh, that headache was getting worse. It was past time he was gone. He contented himself with saying that he could assure her, ma'am, werewolves were real. And nothing to do with any demons or satans or anything. Good day.

Her eyes widened. Her nostrils flared. But he was already walking away, determined not to make eye contact, just take the last word while he'd had it, and-

Something hit him on the back of his head. It wasn't heavy enough to hurt, but it made him stop, made him have to clamp down to keep from shifting. "I admonish you! You are a minion of Satan and I cast you outta here! Satan has you in bondage! Denying it just proves you're Satan's liar!" She said, in a tone that sounded like she'd have preferred to say 'I want to speak to your manager!'

When he shot a startled look back she had her hands balled up into fists, her chin thrust out. Her lips quivered. People in the gas station were staring, they had their phones out, but luckily they seemed to be taking pictures of her, not him.

Behind her, the bus was leaving.

With great resignation, he bent and picked up the object she'd thrown. It looked like a little comic book, about the size of an index card. The front was printed in a single color and said 'WHO OWNS YOU?'

She must have already been holding it. Meant to hand it to him. Angry he'd walked away before she could.

He made eye contact, after all, and dropped it deliberately in the trash beside him.

And by now the woman must have realized people were staring, and not supportively, because she bustled back into her oversized car.

He backed up, hastily, around the brick corner of the building. Never underestimate what these kinds of people might do with enough metal and gasoline under them, if you've made them look foolish. But she just seemed to want to pull out and leave as quickly as possible.

What the hell, nobody else could see him from this angle.

So when she did pull out, as she turned the corner, she got a second and half's good look through her passenger side window at the wolf, on two legs, dressed as was the homeless drifter she'd been harassing, shaking its head in sorrowful disgust.

By the time the squealing tires were out of earshot he was already hidden behind his human mask again, and ready to duck through the wooded park to continue east on foot.

Served him right for considering a shortcut, he supposed.

So bring my bow of burning gold and arrows of desire.

So let the crowded clouds unfold and this wild wind rise higher.

Let He Whose vengeance burns most cold ignite the final fire.

Mine eyes have seen the match-head struck, before at last they tire.

When he got to the other side of Missouri, there was the Mississippi river. No way to walk across.

Maybe a human could swim it. No doubt a wolf could. But just cause he could do it didn't mean he was supposed to. If providence had seen fit, eons ago, to shape the tectonic plates so the slightest possible tilt to the whole continent sent the river south just here, rather than a mile more east or a mile more west, then providence had a reason, and who was he to argue?

He wasn't exactly familiar with this part of the country, but he knew St. Louis would be, well, north. Somewhere on his left. He wasn't sure how far, but either it was close and there'd be bridges there, surely, or it wasn't close and he'd come to another bridge first.

So he walked north.

At first it was just walking. Just like any other night. Just like he'd been doing since the neon wilderness of Nevada. But it was a warm night in the heart of the riverland, wasn't it, and no night when you're out walking past midnight is ever just walking like any other night, is it?

The sights, the smells, the feel of different winds brushing against him--warm and dry from the south, cool and humid from the river, cold and parched like old bones from the northwest--turned into a rhythm and a harmony. And he told himself anyone who goes for a walk at night in the country will tell you it does that, there was nothing special to it, it didn't MEAN anything. And knew he didn't believe it.

No, it wasn't just walking, and it wasn't just a road by the river. Something was happening to him or to this place or both. He could feel the tingle of it, of the liminality of everything, like the feeling of your body being not fully your body just before you fall asleep, like he could remember from the old days, when the old man in the beat up trailer that would never again leave the RV park had taught him to pray, had set him free from his human name, had first brought him into the presence of his god--may his soul run with the pack, and find rest from grieving, for if anyone deserved to know the way to both it was him. Something else was in this night, something alive, dangerous, otherworldly, and holy.

Wait, was it the moon? He stopped in his tracks, searching whatever parts of his memory still kept track of human things like dates and days of the week. Was she full?

No, the night was moonless, he didn't have to shift. As much as this felt like that, it wasn't.

But that wasn't a bad idea. Hadn't it been a long long time since he'd gotten to be himself just to be himself, just for the joy of it, rather than forage or flee or prove a point? And if for whatever reason this walk, this night, was holy, didn't he deserve to be in it as he ought to, as himself?

He stepped off the road, into the trees, until he could smell the muddy water. He stripped off his clothes, rolled them up tight and tied them with his belt. Smoothly, easily, like slipping into a warm bath, he took off his human mask.

If anyone but his god had been watching what came back up out of the woods and set off again down the road they would have been terrified, he supposed, but god was a wolf mightier and greater and more terrible than he, and besides, his god knew him down to his bones.

And if anyone else WAS there, well, they'd have a sight more full of awe to see than one scrawny old vagrant wolf. His god walked with him, he was sure.

God did not speak. That was fine. He heard no footsteps. Used to hunting in a pack, he supposed, so god's footfalls landed perfectly in time with his own where nobody could hear them, and they landed perfectly in his own footprints so he was sure if he looked back he would see only one set, clawed and padded, in the muddy gravel. But the smell was all around him. Wolf, so strong as to be overpowering, yes, but underneath was incense and woodsmoke and something warm and comforting on the stove, and still deeper underneath rain and trees and moss and infinite spaces to roam forever.

He walked a mile-eating lope in a state of ecstasy, and all the way his god silently shepherded him from behind. It might have been hours, it might have been only minutes, before he reached the railway bridge.

He had no qualms about crossing it. He'd done as much before. But when he took a step toward it he felt god come to a stop. So of course he did too. And then he heard the whistle.

The train was headed east, and it had slowed before the bridge, but still if he hadn't already been shifted he couldn't have caught it. Some human forms could've been fast enough, but not his. Providence, you see? Couldn't ask it to be plainer.

He dashed up the gravel bank, caught a ladder on the side of the box car, hung on as it crossed the water. The steel trestle beams flashed past, inches from his face, don't try this at home, kids, but in between them he could see, well, just a shape. Larger than the trees. Slightly deeper black against the night sky. The mere outline of ears, scruff, muzzle visible against the faint zodiacal light.

The eyes blazed like headlights when they turned to meet his.

He felt the presence vanish as the train bore him across the river and away. He would not have presumed to ask for more, not in this life. But as he sat on the boxcar roof and watched the lights of distant Illinois towns whip past, something more came to him. It was no vision, no trance, no out of body experience. He remained fully conscious and even a little bored. It was like a dim memory, from a forgotten corner of childhood, jostled loose by an unexpected sight or sound, but he would testify this had never happened.

For he had never been to the lodge it showed him, square cut logs and mossy bricks, high windows in the peaks of the roof. Never pushed open that door. Never seen the welcoming darkness within, smelled again the scent of his god. Never stepped through, closed the door gently behind him, seen the firelight, the sunset through the windows.

If he had ever in the past gone to that chair by that fire, laid his wolf's head on that knee, felt that paw stroke his ears, heard that voice tell him he was welcome, he was at last home, could he have had it in his soul to ever have left? To be here now? Nossir.

This was no memory. This was a promise.

He held on to the feeling of it as he lay his back on the boxcar roof with the bundle of his clothing as a pillow. Passed it between his racing mind and his heaving chest to memorize and preserve as the clouds above thinned and the stars came out.

Should he use this story next time he had a chance to talk to someone? Or was it too personal? It could be confusing, too hard to put into words the feeling of it, what it had meant, why it had meant it.

Maybe this had been just meant for him. He could be at peace with that.

My soul has dreamed of slim grey ships that pass into the west.

My dreams have yearned for white shores on the cool dark forest's breast.

Oh, to sink forever deeper in that oceansful of rest,

But that is still tomorrow, may tomorrow's name be blest.

By the time he reached Chicago he was on the run in earnest.

It had been, well, years since he'd set foot in a city of any appreciable size. He'd been taught, unless it was one you knew very well, that big cities made for nervous, irritable werewolves, just a basic fact of who and what he was. But in his arrogance he'd presumed providence would be somehow between him and that.

It wouldn't and it wasn't and he was miserably on edge by the time he had reached the park.

To the east had been nothing but the lake. He knew it wasn't the ocean, but he'd never seen the ocean and so this was probably close enough. The sight of anything that wasn't the city--that wasn't loud noises and unexpected smells and crowds that meant he had no idea where to run if he needed to--had been immediately soothing.

The people milling about among the grass and flowerbeds were the largest audience he was ever likely to get. It was a little awkward at first. He realized he'd never before tried speaking to more than one person at once, but he hit his stride when he made himself see them not as they were, but as they would one day be: not a crowd of confused humans, each alone despite being together, but as a pack. And talking to a pack was easy.

So he told them how a pack didn't leave its members out in the cold. Didn't let them go hungry. Didn't make them pay rent. A pack doesn't force most to slave their lives away to build a mountain of wealth for the few. Everything could yet be solved. Everything could yet be saved!

And just when he was about to mention the bite, he saw the two B. of E.P.M. agents.

He stopped mid-sentence. Wild panic, hovering overhead since he'd set foot in this necropolis of accursed humanity, took him. He turned, he ran, between onlookers confused by his sermon and more confused by its abrupt conclusion, praying the agents would be too concerned with inconspicuity to give earnest chase.

But then, they wouldn't have to, would they? They had him between them and the lake.

"Hey, this way!" He felt, rather than heard, someone say, "Quick!"

He didn't know where 'this way' was, or who was telling him so, but it had to be better than the agents. So he ducked between two banks of low cherry trees, and-

-stumbled onto a gravel path that hadn't been there a moment before.

Have you ever seen, he remembered asking a trucker who'd given him a ride, anything powerfully strange, that you couldn't explain, as if a wilder, truer, more wonderous world were just around the corner if you could only find the way to enter it?

The first thing that hit him was the smell of onions. Fresh, alive, savory, and eye-wateringly overwhelming. He was immediately grateful he had his human mask on, if he'd come here as the wolf he'd probably have been knocked out.

The second thing he noticed was the buildings. Gleaming white, so pale they seemed luminous, all long graceful arcades and collonaded palaces. He was certain those hadn't been there a moment ago either.

And then there was the sky. Black as night, though the sun was fully out, and full of stars, but the wrong stars. Too many, too many colors, and all smeared into faint circles around the north pole.

And finally the silence. There was no one else here, as far as eye could see or ear could hear.

But if he was alone, who had just invited him?

"Don't worry," a crow landed on the marble balustrade, fluffed its feathers, "They can't follow you here."

"Nobody can get in here," added the raccoon who climbed up the ivy spilling from the urn-shaped planter, "unless we let them in."

There were a lot of questions going on here and he suspected most of them were interminable detours, so he just asked why, then, they had let him in?

"Cause those agents didn't want us to!" The crow croaked a single harsh laugh.

"We do this a lot," The raccoon trundled up to his ankle, sniffed him experimentally. It was a little surreal that two animals, who were able to be much more animal than he could be, still talked with voices that sounded more human than his at his most human, but then that was hardly the most unusual thing happening right now, was it? "Like when the cops are chasing or harassing someone. Just open the door a crack, let em stumble in, just till the cops give up and look somewhere else."

"We don't usually talk to em, though." The crow alighted on his shoulder. It was heavier than he'd have expected. "They get freaked out enough at finding themselves here."

He leaned on the marble railing and let his eyes wander around the placid lagoon and the snow-white colonnades surrounding it. On the one side was a huge churchlike dome, on the other an arcade through which came the sound of the sea. A vine-trailing golden statue regarded him suspiciously from her plinth in the middle of the water. And growing from every patch of dirt, from every crack in the sidewalk, were wild onions.

So what, exactly, he had to ask, was here?

"Well," the raccoon said, "You heard of the 1893 World's Fair and Centennial Exposition? See, the magnates who ran Chicago back in the day wanted to out-do Paris, and the Eiffel Tower, and-"

The crow raised a wing to hush what was apparently a long and long-practiced lecture. "They were gonna tear it all down when the fair was done. So we stole it."

"Put it all in a little eddy of sideways time for safe keeping, and we've been living here ever since!" finished the raccoon, as if putting things in an eddy of sideways time was something you just did.

To the west, a huge ferris wheel, glittering with lights, rolled slowly behind the artificial horizon of the city, like a permanent electric sunset. "Yeah, we didn't get enough to get the wheel." The raccoon clasped its paws solicitously, "We can see it, though, most days. Anyway. You need some place to rest? Are you hungry?"

"I, uh," the crow added, "hope you like onions, if you are."

"Everything ends up tasting like onions here." The raccoon stared dejectedly at the white colonnades across the water. "You get used to it. Assuming you stay?"

Wait, what?

"I mean, we get occasional guests," the raccoon's voice got squeakier the closer it got to pleading, "but it's been a hundred years and this is the first time another shapeshifter's turned up!"

He had to admit, it had never occurred to him that he was 'a shapeshifter.'

"It's not so bad!" the crow insisted. "And we could make it a haven for shapeshifters! Those like us, in the heart of the human city, but where no cop or agent can reach them! I might not have caught much of, well, whatever speech you were trying to give out there, but that's basically what you were talking about, right?"

They both looked at him like lonely pups. Startled worry gave way to piteous empathy like melting snow before a fire hose.

He told them thank you, as politely as he could, thank you but no. What they described was worthy, and just, and for any other wolf it would have been, well, a godsend. But he still had a holy calling, out there in the world. The Great Pack wasn't going to call itself. As weary as he was, as homesick as he was, this could not be his home.

But he'd be glad to share a meal with them, while he waited for the coast to clear enough for him to be on his way. He didn't mind, he promised, the taste of wild onions.

As long as, he didn't add out loud, it wasn't forever.

You may have heard a mention of a place called Galilee

And the beauty of its lilies by the soft and stormy sea?

There is glory on that gallows still available to me,

And if you make me take it, friend, what will become of thee?

He fled north, through Wisconsin.

The crow had warned him when the agents were at the other end of the park. On emerging back into the world alongside highway 41 he had left Chicago as quickly, and gratefully, as he could. If he could make the Canadian border, he'd be, well, not SAFE, Canada wasn't really that much better, but at least he'd be out of the Bureau's jurisdiction.

But by the time he skirted past Milwaukee he was sure he was being followed. Police cars were blocking the roads, and he didn't want to find out why. He followed a railroad instead, in the most wolflike shape he had, and tried to look as much like a stray dog as he could as he trotted north.

He got farther than he had any right to expect, honestly, before the agents caught him.

The first warning should have been the powerful vinegary, musky odor, spread all over the road. He should have guessed it was there to mask a scent, but he was distracted like a fool, and assumed this was merely a nearby skunk.

Which meant the first actual warning he got was the weighted bolas, fired by a sneering agent who stepped out from behind a roadsign, that wrapped around his ankles, bruised his shins, and left him face down in the road.

His head spun when it hit the asphalt. He was aware someone was speaking to him but hearing had deserted him as much as smell "...being taken into detention," the other agent was saying as it came back, "under provisional authority of the Bureau of Extrahuman-"

"Man, you don't need to bother with that bullshit," the sneering agent set down the launcher. "They're either animals or monsters. Either way they don't have rights!"

Maybe the friendlier agent had a comeback to that. But maybe he didn't. Not like it made a difference either way.

Why would providence bring him to this? Why lead him so far, guide him so carefully, only to leave him caught and collared here? Likely never to be heard from again?

"You should've stayed put. Shouldn't've made trouble." The tall agent was standing over him now. His sneering partner had gone to bring the armored car they'd parked off the road, where it wouldn't be seen--would that he didn't know the backs of those, bare steel and twisted wire, built to say to the occupant 'you are not a prisoner, you are a beast in a cage' but to his shame he did, and would again, it seemed. "You coulda just stayed quiet and safe in whatever filthy hole you called a den, and minded your own business. But no, you have to drag us across twelve states, causing incident after incident."

Thinking of this one as the 'friendlier' agent had been a mistake. "Your friend you talked into asking to get turned? Asked an undercover cop posing as a werewolf to bite him! The sheriff you escaped from in Vernon County? That poor woman you harassed in Camdenton? Yeah, we've got their statements too, so we know what you've been up to."

Isn't this what you wanted? whispered a treacherous, accusing corner of his mind. You threw away your name and your humanity. You try to give away all your money. You ignore food and sleep and danger. Don't pretend you're not trying to sacrifice yourself! Well, congratulations, now you're gonna find out what that means.

"You made us chase you two thousand miles," chimed in the agent, "so now you're gonna find out how bad we can make it for you, mutt."

Oh Father of all Packs--he closed his eyes, laid his cheek on the road--never have I been in greater need, let my work not have been in vain, and if this be my day to stand before thee turn me not away, all of my soul which is worthy, welcome, all which is unworthy, forgive-

The sound of an approaching engine made it difficult to focus, but what was left to him but persevering in prayer? He clenched his jaw and concentrated--let my road lead to thy house, where I may lay my boots at your door, my clothes at your hearth, and need them never again. Let thy howl lay all my griefs to rest, and call me to your... wait, was there more than one engine approaching?

"You will get only one warning." The tall agent's voice rang. "Do not advance any closer!"

"You sure you want to be doing this?" growled a new voice. One that couldn't have been made by a human throat.

He twisted around to look up. Three motorcycles had pulled up, clearly as close as they could. Dismounting from each was a wolf, defiantly shifted, human masks disregarded. A smaller one to the right, a thick-furred and dour one to the left, the biggest front and center. The tall agent was standing between him and those who had been sent, clearly, to save him. The sneering agent had drawn a gun.

"Because it looks to me," the big wolf continued as if not staring down a loaded gun, "like you're illegally arresting a man who hasn't broken any laws, and doing it close enough to my pack's home that I feel like I want an explanation."

"I wouldn't say we're arresting a man," snapped the sneering agent.

"That's none of your business," the tall agent tried and failed to cut his partner off.

"After you spend a whole day crowing to every cop in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Upper Peninsula about 'dangerous werewolves?' So none of my pack can show our faces? Even though YOUR bureau says we've got the 'right to secrecy' not that we asked for it, now you're the ones blowing it?" The big wolf's growl was the same note as his bike's motor. "Yeah, I think it's my business."

"Look, mutt, this guy's disruptive," the sneering agent said. "He's offered to bite people!"

"There's no law against turning someone consensually."

"He let himself be seen as a wolf!"

"Also not illegal."

"He made us chase him for weeks!"

"Which is your job, agent," the big wolf planted his fists on his hips, took one step away from his bike, "and which you shouldn't've been doing over someone who hadn't broken any laws! You got any other reason I should let you proceed with this abduction? Cause that's what it is if you don't have any charges, which we all know you don't!"

"Howabout:" the sneering agent sneered, "that I loaded this gun with silver bullets."

There was a long pause. The wind moved the trees and began to clear the acrid musk laid down to trap him, replaced it with the smells of forest, of idling engine, and of wolf.

"This kinda shit," growled the big wolf, arms still akimbo, "is why you're not qualified to manage a youth group, never mind any extrahuman populations. You don't know what you're doing. Silver's not poison. It's not kryptonite. It's not fatal, agent," he huffed, "it just means I'm not invulnerable to that shot!"

"So," to his credit, the agent did not falter, "I just need to put it right between your eyes."

"You could try." The big wolf shrugged. "If you do, you know it's the only shot you get. And if it misses, you know you won't just have one werewolf you just tried and failed to kill. You won't just have three."

The hedges to either side of the road rustled, clearly on cue. The big wolf grinned.

"How many of you are there?" The tall agent said. It still didn't seem to occur to him to tell his partner to lower his gun.

"Like we're gonna tell," scoffed the smaller wolf.

"So you consider your options, agent." Impressive how the big wolf could threaten without threatening. "You take a shot at me, and then what happens, happens. And then, if you make it back to your bosses, you'll have to explain why a single vagrant was worth starting a war with every wolf in the country."

Now the agent did falter, just a little. "You seem really confident you'd walk away to tell them."

"I am." The big wolf nodded toward the bushes. "But I don't have to walk away. We've got phones, agent. Been recording this whole time. Maybe you drop me. Maybe this is my last stand. But if it is, every wolf in the country is gonna watch you murder me. And not just the wolves. The Nain Rouge, we're not far from their turf. All the Sasq'ets. Las Lloronas. Least two congregations of Mothfolk. Every goblin in Kentucky. Those vampire families in Utah you think we're not on speaking terms with. And who knows who they'll tell?"

The big wolf leaned forward, bared his teeth. "You better hope you miss, little man."

It was at this point the agents remembered that bureau policy was to let him off with a warning.

He rode behind one of the wolves who had emerged from the undergrowth. The other had gone straight to the big wolf and demanded he never do 'anything like that again!'

"Nobody got hurt, pup!" the big wolf had objected, sheepishly.

"We got tipped off that all the local cops were arresting werewolves on sight," explained the fast-talking wolf, "so we started making calls. Heard about you from other packs all over," his progress was being talked about? "mostly about how this guy Curtis got arrested for trying to get turned, and when the cops let him out the next day went right back and found someone to bite him!"

Curtis was even now turning, was part of the pack! And that was joyous news enough that he missed most of the details about how they'd found the place the agents meant to ambush him, had ridden out to his salvation, but he didn't need to understand it to be grateful.

Since he guessed they might not understand if he said God or Providence had sent them, he didn't.

He'd never been on a motorcycle before, and as far as he was concerned he need never ride one again. Luckily it wasn't far to Sault Ste. Marie, and the Canadian border.

"No!" said the wolf he'd ridden behind, to whom he tried to give his wallet, "that has your I.D. in it! You're going to need that when you go through border control!" The worn and ragged leather lump was forced back into his hands. "Tell them you're a werewolf, say you're claiming sanctuary under the Montcalm Act, and that my cousin Ian is waiting on the other side of customs to take you to my parents' pack in Caliper Lake, Ontario. You got that?"

He consented to repeat the info back, but made a stubborn point of taking his ID out and leaving the wallet on the road. They rolled their eyes, but didn't try to stop him, and eventually one of them scooped it up off the parking lot cement.

He thanked them, from the bottom of his heart. He would never again have any pack but the Great Pack, but if it were yet his to have one, he told them, he would that it were one like theirs. And had anyone ever told them, he asked, that they were part of something holy?

"I don't know that I'd put it like that," said the big wolf who had stood down the agents, "but I'm not gonna disagree."

He watched them turn to head back across the long bridge to Michigan, and sent every prayer he had after them. Whatever he had been meant to do on this pilgrimage, it was complete.

Time to see where providence needed him next.

He took a place in the customs line, and wondered if the tired-looking man standing in front of him had been told there could be a place for him in the Pack.

So, my mind has heard a rumor of the coming of the Lord

And his coming, it is coming, of that am I assured.

Glory glory, alleluia. Can it be you have not heard?

That we do not wait forever, brother, better get aboard.

"That guy," Greg said, when they stopped for gas, "was crazy, right? He's gonna drive my parents nuts, right?"

"I dunno," Dan said, "if I'd call anything nuts compared with 'threatening to start a war with the Bureau!'"

"I wasn't threatening to start a war!" Miles protested, "I was warning them they were about to! Anyway, even if that guy was nuts, he was still one of us. If wolves don't protect eachother, who's gonna?"

"Yeah, that sounded like the sorta thing he was talking about." Ryan fiddled with the wallet the strange man had left behind, "It made a lot less sense when he said it, though. Whoa! Guys!" he barked, shrill and incredulous. "There's like a thousand bucks in here what the fuck?!"

"We're still telling everyone, right?" Owen, voice hard and serious, ignored him. "We're still showing people those videos, right? Even if nothing happens, every pack, every lone wolf, needs to know that the Bureau's not like it was when we were kids."

"Just for their own safety!" Martin agreed.

"Now who's gonna start a war?" Miles sighed. "Alright. You're not wrong. Let's talk about it when we get home?"

They turned homeward. And if providence, its former favored son seen safe to journey's end, then pricked pointed ears, raised a night-colored muzzle, turned a headlight beam gaze to follow them, they paid it no mind.