6 July 2009, Early Morning, On the Road to Manchester

Naydene drove the van. Mission accomplished. Enemy destroyed. There were bodies piled up in the back of the conversion van and disposal to do. The patter of the rain on the windshield was about the only positive sign this night; it meant that the blood would be washed away.

But no, Naydene didn't want to think about it. She pushed the final images of her standoff with Rael as far away as her mind would allow. Wyrm frenzied, he'd ripped Creed's heart out before her eyes, gulped it down with the equivalent of a satisfied burp, and then laughed insanely as he turned on her. She knew the score and knew that he couldn't be allowed to continue the atrocity, that it was her job to see to it. Naydene-rhya faced down Kinslayer, no longer the daughter or the student, but rather the one who had to see the hard job through to the end, even if it meant his life to do it.

The exchange was brief. He circled her with the intent of the monster within reflected in the balefire in his eyes. She struck a clean blow and then, as if some unseen hand were playing the pieces on the board, he sidestepped without warning and vanished. Naydene stood there in crinos, stupefied, looking to Cerise, whose eyes reflected something she hadn't really expected to see--the kind of guilt you feel when you do something awful that -has- to be done.

"Erebus." was all Cerise said.

Cerise followed in the pickup truck. Just as well, she didn't want to talk to her 'sister' anyway. Okay, maybe she had needed to act, but how the hell she had known the rite to send him left Naydene wondering about a lot of things--including what Cerise had been getting herself into. When the shock had worn off, it was down to the nasty business of finishing off the two remaining of Creed's pack. It wasn't pleasant work, simply necessary, and with Cerise offering the expected commentary as Naydene went about the grisly task of giving honorless and nameless scum an equally honorless death.

It was somehow all one big, fucked up, thankless job. Hell, even the bird they found in the cage hadn't even offered anything more than a noisy departure after the Glasswalker had removed the gold wire from its beak. She gave the bird a derisive snort and muttered under her breath as it took wing. And she noted to herself that Ferd had the right idea about birds....

All gathered up, wrapped pretty as you please in tarps from the barn and the back of her pickup, the dead piled up in the rear of the van were a sullen reminder why Naydene had never been happy about being what she was. Death clung to every garou alive, waiting to spring out with claws and teeth and fur. It was why she worked like a dog to make a difference in other ways, excel in the ways that life in Chicago would have snuffed out like a light. Why she struggled to keep her rage low....

Because the meekest of Gaia's creatures needed a quiet champion and the rage that others held within their souls drove those precious creatures away. And even for all of Cerise's devotion to peace, they still shied from her.

Tarkham's gates loomed up on her before she knew it. It took a moment to get past the gate and to send the word out to the others that there was work to be done. First the park the van, then to meet up with the Elders. In cases like this, the matter was always cut and dried. Then to go and do the one job that no one on all of the bawn wanted to do....

...Go tell Stacee.