Watch Dogs
#1 of Watch Dogs
I am the guilty one
Ball and chain around my leg
I am the cursed one
Black cloud hangin' overhead
Fill the heart that pumps bad blood
All inside of me.''
-- Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Killer Wolf
The 20 Year Prologue
A cold wind was setting in whistling through the trees as an old man wrapped in a dark greatcoat which grew darker as it neared the shoulder that he gripped tightly, finally he seemed to reach a point where he wouldn't go on, he could hear footsteps approaching patiently, 'clever' he thought as the pace slowed as the invisible pursuer saw he had stopped. He having decided upon something reached into his stained old coat and pulled out a phone, grimacing as he pulled his hand away from his other arm revealed now to have been shot. He shakily tapped in a number that he knew well ... oh, far too well, and raised the phone to his lips.
As the dial toned he realised that his hunter had now ground to a halt, unsure as to what his prey was doing.
The phone at the other end was finally picked up, he growled into the phone "call off your hounds, at least call of your hounds, at least until this is finished."
"Oh, all right, if only because I'm keen to see what would cause you to consider peaceful surrender especially given the amount of mess you caused when you left."
"You know very well what would have happened if I hadn't run for it, and this is only because I know you own me, remember how I saved your besuited arse when I dropped that druidic suicide bomber while he was reading out his demands."
"Alright then, what do you want then you insufferable old bastard?"
"Twenty years" he gasped, the wound burning in his arm "I've been shot, with silver, you know what that means. So I'm calling in the life-debt, keep a long way away from my son for twenty years. If he becomes a lost boy you can take him but keep him out of your damned watch, and even more keep him from being caught in a cull ,or turned into one of those packless" he couldn't have put more venom into child murderer" hunters, I know you've got pull over them or they would never have caught me."
"very well, let them make it quick for my sake, I really don't want to see you decorating the floor when I've got to deal with their spectre of a grand master, Goodbye old friend, maybe we will meet again on the other side"
"I'll look forward to seeing you down in the houses of pain then." with a final twitch of his now ruined arm he ended the call and faced a sudden rustle in the trees he spotted a gaunt man with gleaming farquharson rifle aimed at him his last thought was that it was good to see those old weapons still around ,as he hunter levelled the rifle. A rather more appropriate thought perhaps could have been that with one you could cause your choice in mammal to be transformed into rapidly cooling meat that could without much hassle could be easily be turned into the meal of choice of the hunter. A fact that was oddly enough right at the top of the mind of the gaunt man who thoughts ran strangely like this "well It's over now and you know what the RULES are , and it wasn't human and it felt fine ,so fine." And so he progressed on the corpse, rifle dangling over his back on a sling, and drawing a pair of knives (a couple that is an unlikely duo anywhere out of some of the insaner religious sects and more extreme members-only clubs, being a fileting knife and a skinning knife, and grinned slowly as he began his grisly work.