✨Chapter 1

Reg had not expected to have to pose for the camera when she arrived at City Hall. Several of the attendees had encouraged her to go to the summit meeting between the warlocks and the werewolves, though she didn’t exactly feel qualified to be there. Who was she? She didn’t have any standing in the negotiations between the two factions.

“But don’t you see, that’s just the point?” Sarah asked. She was Reg’s landlord and one of the witches who would be attending the so-called peace talks. “We need people there who are impartial third parties who can help to come to an acceptable solution for both sides. We must find some way to de-escalate the violence between the coven and the pack before further harm is done.”

Eventually, Reg had let herself be talked into attending. She had to admit that she was curious to listen in on what was being done. She could go and just keep quiet and listen to what everyone else had to say. Attending didn’t mean she had to stand up in front of everyone and give them her opinion or try to personally mediate peace between the two sides. She would just go and watch.

She had pictured a room full of chairs, maybe forty or fifty of them, with all kinds of people from around town who wanted to sit in and hear what was going on. She was not expecting the security check she had to go through when she got to City Hall. She needed to show her identification and have her picture taken for the security badge she was issued before entering the community room where the debate would occur.

She tried to tidy herself up for the picture. She gathered up her skinny red box braids and pushed them all behind her shoulders, made sure that her blouse and headscarf were straight, and smoothed her colorful, voluminous skirts, even though she knew that they probably wouldn’t make it into the picture. It was a lot more attention than she had expected to get.

“What is your position?” the security guard asked her after taking her picture.

Reg wondered if he was a troll. He was quite tall, and his face did not show what he was thinking. She was clearly just another person to be processed, not of any real interest to him. He wanted to classify her, put her into the system, and get on to the next person. The rigidity of his process reminded her of Skippy, the supervisor at the Cyclone Tower.

“I don’t have a position,” Reg explained, shaking her head. “I’m a psychic here in Black Sands.”

“You are part of the coven?”

“No. I’m not—”

Reg stopped herself from saying that she wasn’t a witch. She had never seen herself that way, even though Sarah and others had repeatedly told her that her powers were very well-developed and she had a number of gifts that were quite rare. Even more surprising was that she had learned to exercise them as she had when she had been forced to repress them for her entire childhood. She hadn’t even been aware of them until she had moved to Black Sands just a couple of years before.

Reg still didn’t consider herself a witch. She had chosen to be known as a psychic, back when she thought she was just really good at cold-reading people and didn’t know that she could read thoughts or auras and hear the actual voices of the dead. She had been told that the voices in her head were not real and she needed to shut them out and pretend that they didn’t exist if she didn’t want people to think that she was crazy.

She might also be part siren and part immortal, but she chose not to spread those tidbits around. They made her a target of the people who feared those races and she preferred not to find more smashed eggs on her car or door, mystical graffiti, or remnants of curses in the yard.

The guard looked at her, scowling. “Are you a member of the pack?”

“No, I’m not a wolf.”

“So you’re just… independent.”

Reg nodded. “Yeah. I just wanted to see what was going on, what everybody has to say…”

He tapped whatever information he needed into the computer and printed her security badge onto a white plastic card, to which he attached a lanyard and handed it to her. Reg looked at the unflattering picture on the badge and shook her head. She didn’t think she looked that bad. Somehow, the government always seemed to produce the ugliest identity pictures. It was like they did it on purpose.

Reg hung the lanyard around her neck and adjusted the length, trying to center the badge and position it so that it didn’t sit in such an awkward position. She wished it had been on a pin instead of a lanyard.

“Move along,” the security man encouraged, “I need to get everyone processed.”

It wasn’t like there were a lot of people behind Reg, and they had three officers checking people in.

The halls had wood paneling and tile floors. Smudgy beige paintings hung at intervals down the corridor.

The room was much smaller than Reg had expected. A large boardroom table with chairs around it rather than a podium at the front of the room and mostly anonymous people observing from rows of chairs.

Sarah was talking to Davyn and turned around when Reg walked in.

“Oh, Reg, I’m glad you made it!”

She made it sound like she hadn’t just talked to Reg about it a couple of hours earlier and might have thought Reg was still in bed, even though it was afternoon, and Reg was always up by noon.

Almost always.

“I thought there would be more people,” Reg said. There was a quiet murmur of voices. Reg looked around at the people who had assembled so far. She recognized most of them. Davyn was her mentor in helping her to hone her firecasting ability. Letticia, the old crone who led the witches’ coven. Mayor Nichols, whom Reg had only ever seen on TV and never in person. Jake, Reg’s ex-boyfriend who had accidentally been transformed into a werewolf while he had been conducting heinous experiments on them.

John, the son of Corvin, the absent leader of the warlock coven. Reg had not seen Julian, initially. Julian Sabat was an investigator with the Magical Investigations Endangered Species Division. Reg supposed he was there because of the involvement of the werewolves.

And Aleph, the alpha of the werewolf pack was there. Reg had rarely encountered him in his human guise. He had a rugged appearance, with shaggy blond hair and a gaunt, wary expression.

Aleph saw Reg examining him and frowned. But his eyes did not linger on her for long. She was clearly not a person he needed to be worried about.

“We would like to call the meeting to order,” the mayor said pompously. “If everyone would please take their seats.”

Reg looked for the chair where she would be the least visible. She was regretting that she had listened to Sarah. She didn’t belong there with the community leaders.

“Come sit over here,” Sarah tugged on Reg’s arm and guided her toward a seat. There wasn’t really anywhere for Reg to hide around the oval table. Everyone had the same visibility. It wasn’t Arthur’s round table, where everyone had an equal place, but it was pretty close. Reg sat down as instructed. The poofy seat squeaked as she settled in. The rest of the attendees sat down. Bending down to talk in his ear, the mayor’s PA asked in a loud whisper whether he needed anything else. He motioned her away, and she drifted out of the room, pulling the door shut quietly behind her.

As soon as it closed, Aleph shot out of his seat. He wrenched the door back open, startling the PA so that she shrieked and jumped back.

“This door is not to be closed,” Aleph said fiercely. “There will be no closed doors.”

“I’m sorry!” The woman looked past him, through the doorway to her boss, for confirmation.

Mayor Nichols gave a little wave. “It’s fine, Chelsea.”

She put a hand over her heart, trying to calm herself. “I’m sorry, Mr. Aleph, I didn’t know.”

He looked around, alert for the approach of any enemy. Eventually, he gave a nod and retreated to his seat in the meeting room.

✨Chapter 2

Mayor Nichols looked around the table as everyone settled in. He repositioned the yellow legal pad on the table in front of him, and his eyes moved slowly around the table, evaluating each person present.

“Should we start with introductions?”

“I think everyone here knows everyone else,” Letticia observed. “I suggest we get right into it.”

There were a couple of faces that Reg did not know, but she was not going to argue Letticia’s suggestion. She preferred not to introduce herself to everyone when she knew she had no standing there and should have just stayed home. Sarah and Davyn could have filled her in on anything she needed to know.

The mayor looked around the table. “Is everyone okay with that?”

There were no objections. The mayor didn’t have a gavel, but he gave a brisk, official nod. “Moved by Letticia Adams, I will second. No objections.”

He looked at the scrawny, ferret-like man seated to his right, who scribbled something in the thick, hardcover black book that must be the official minutes of such meetings.

“I don’t see the need for your human rules of order,” Aleph barked. “We do not follow them in our gatherings. They’re just the humans’ way of trying to assert dominance.”

The mayor raised his eyebrows. He looked at his recorder as if he didn’t know whether a change in procedure were even allowed.

The recorder shrugged his narrow shoulders. The mayor looked around the table. “Are there any objections?”

Aleph’s expression was a snarl. If anyone had thought to object, they were probably dissuaded by his long canines. Reg swallowed. She was on good terms with the werewolves but, even as a friend of the pack, she would not want to argue with that snarl. No one in the room raised any objections.

“Fine, then,” the mayor said slowly, “I’m not sure how to proceed without our usual order of functions… the purpose of this meeting is an open discussion of… the tensions between the werewolves and other practitioners. There are concerns about an escalation in violence. As various community leaders, we wanted to gather together to discuss possible solutions.”

“There is no need for any outside interference,” Jake asserted. “There is no need for the municipal government or anyone else to get involved in something that is none of their business.”

“If our citizens are being targeted by these attacks, the municipality can’t just look the other way,” the mayor disagreed. “We need to deal with it before it escalates and more people are hurt.”

“The reason for attacks on humans is that they have been targeting wolves,” Aleph said. His voice was a low growl. “They will soon learn that doing so is a dangerous proposition, and they will stop.” He gave a cold smile. “It is what we call a natural consequence. Wolves find using natural consequences to be a very effective way to train our cubs.”

“Why are the wolves even coming into Black Sands?” John challenged. “After their unprovoked attack on the coven in the midst of our spring equinox ritual, they are not welcome here. I thought they had agreed to move out of the area. Maybe even out of Florida.”

“The attack was perpetrated by a small number of wolves,” Aleph pointed out, “not the entire pack. They have moved on. There is still talk about moving the full pack, but this is a big decision when we have just gotten established here. We have one litter of cubs only half-grown, and two more expected in the next couple of weeks. Even humans can understand the difficulty of disrupting so many infants. Such a move would put both the mothers and the pups at considerable risk.”

“Maybe the wolves should have considered that before attacking the coven,” John shot back.

“The actions of a few rogue wolves do not constitute a decision of the pack.”

“We all know about the attack at the Temple Orange Grove,” Sarah interposed, “and if October and the other wolves involved in that attack have left, then that doesn’t enter into today’s discussion.”

There were a few nods from around the table.

“What we are talking about today is something quite different. There is ongoing friction between the warlocks and the wolves even though the wolves involved in the attack have left,” Sarah went on. “That is what we need to address.”

Reg had heard only rumors and half stories about what had been happening around town. She listened with interest, wanting to get all the details of what had happened.

“There have been more unprovoked werewolf attacks,” John spoke up. He absently rubbed a long, red scar on his forearm that he had sustained in the equinox attack, his movement drawing it to everybody’s attention. “The attack at the temple was not the only one. Either the perpetrators of that attack have not left the area, or more are willing to take up the cause.”

“There have been no unprovoked attacks,” Aleph argued. “Not since the one October led. You have been misinformed.”

“There have been attacks,” John repeated, raising his voice to a shout. “Why do you think we are fighting back? We have been living in peace for decades. Why would that suddenly change? You need to leave here and take all of the pack with you. You say that October is gone, but he is obviously still here, being hidden and protected by the pack, or else others have taken up his cause.”

Jake stood up. While he had some of the wildness of Aleph, he still retained the beauty that he’d had before his transformation. Even without the spell that Jake had used to bind Reg to him, she found herself irresistibly drawn to him, yearning for the closeness they once shared. The spark in his blue eyes and the chiseled contours of his biceps and pecs, reminiscent of a statue carved from marble, made her heart race. His strong jawline, framed by either a short beard or a rugged stubble, only added to his allure.

“The warlocks have been harassing the wolves,” he accused. “Every time someone from the pack comes into town, they are bullied and harassed until they are goaded into taking action or have to return to the pack without completing their errands. Does it amuse you to tease and taunt women and children? To keep up a constant stream of pressure until we are all forced to either fight back or leave?”

“It’s not that long since you were a warlock yourself,” John said with a smirk. “You’re pretty new to the shifter scene. Exactly how did you treat the wolves before you were turned?”

Jake reddened at the accusation. Reg was sure he did not like to be reminded of how he had caged the wolves, keeping them in tiny kennels in deplorable conditions while he performed his abominable experiments on them. Not only on adult wolves but also on embryos. Things that were forbidden by the human authorities, not just by unwritten moral or ethical standards. He had not cared about the wolves’ human characteristics, claiming that they were not sentient. He had told many other lies to justify what he had done.

In the end, it had been a blessing that he had been bitten and turned by one of the newborn werewolves he was tormenting. It had been a kind of justice that no one had expected. Now, it would appear he was a full member of the pack with no sentimental ties to the warlocks he had once been aligned with.

“There must be some independent reports of what has been going on,” Reg murmured to Sarah. “Have the wolves been harassed and provoked? Where are they now?”

John heard Reg, even though she was speaking quietly. “Whether they have been confronted or not doesn’t make any difference. There is no excuse for the werewolves attacking humans in the town. They are in human territory. They are expected to abide by human laws.”

“Wolves are an endangered magical species,” Julian spoke up. “All of Florida is their territory. Any violence toward wolves, any kind of harassment, is punishable by fines and possible jail sentences.”

“Nobody wants to hear from you,” John snapped. “Who invited you here, anyway?”

“Magical investigations has every right to be present at this meeting. We must do everything within our power to preserve this endangered species.” His eyes flicked toward Aleph. “Especially when there are actively breeding pairs in the area. One litter of cubs already born and two more on the way! They cannot be moved now. They must remain here.”

“You think that because they’re pregnant they can’t be moved? Women move while they’re pregnant all the time. Are the werewolves so delicate that their women drop their litters at the least disturbance? Are they like other animals that will eat their young if the babies have been touched by humans?”

Aleph leaped to his feet with a roar. His chair crashed to the floor. There was chaos for a few minutes while everyone tried to keep Aleph and Jake away from John and the others. Eventually, everyone was seated again and, when Reg looked around the room, it didn’t appear that anyone had sustained any injuries. No bloody noses or split lips. It was a good thing no one was drinking, or it would have been a good old barroom brawl.

“Everyone sit,” the mayor said belatedly. “Everyone must remain in their seats. Keep your hands to yourselves. This is a discussion; there will be no physical contact.”

He looked around at everybody, pausing on each person individually until he got a nod or word of acknowledgment from them.

I hope you enjoyed this sample of

Fur and Fury

By P.D. Workman

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