A Nepalese Werewolf in London

Or

One More, With Stealing

By Ally

 There are times when the world seems to fall away. Everything you valued is lost or shattered, leaving you with nothing but yourself and the question “What now?”

There are other times when you go off at the beam end for no reason other than your mother’s violent murder at the hands of your supposed rival in love. This was one of those times. 

* * *

Yakky had been wandering the streets of the district formerly known as London, now part of the huge conglomeration of cities that made up Planet Buffy, for several hours. At first, he had fully expected to be picked up by the NGSPIB or, in fact, any one of Buffy’s cronies. As the only child of the ruler of a vast empire, and therefore the first in line, he supposed that he was the prime suspect for her murder. This, more than anything else, shows that Yakky understands very little.

Anyone who knew what he was thinking would wonder why he wasn’t hiding. This leads nicely to the little that Yakky understood; namely, that the NGSPIB would find him in the end, so why waste money on plastic surgery or flights to Brazil?

By evening, he was hungry, and decided that he could waste some money on food. Yakky stopped his despondent trudge, which was good for creating an atmosphere but terrible when you wanted to see where you were going, and looked around. Some stroke of narrative convention (which as yet showed no signs of crumbling, at least not around Yakky) had placed a M@cBeth’s – whatever that was, Yakky thought morosely – on the opposite side of the road. He crossed over and went inside.

M@cBeth’s turned out to be an Internet fast-food café and, for increasingly necessary reasons, a food poisoning clinic. Its customers seemed to comprise of nervous-looking pre-teens at the computers, girls with Puffa jackets whose mobile phones were, inexplicably, in their boots, and Yakky himself. It was obviously a slow night.

“What would you like to order?” the underpaid boy behind the counter asked him.

“What will kill me fastest?”

“Uh…the Deathburger. Maybe.” Or possibly overpaid, Yakky thought.

“I’ll have one of those.”
Three minutes later, the boy handed him a tray of chicken nuggets. Definitely overpaid, Yakky thought, but it’ll do the job. He took the tray, paid the boy and sat down at a table that was as far away from the girls as possible without being too near the kids at the computers.

Had he been less miserable and self-absorbed, he might have been more alert. As it was, he was very surprised (not to mention scalded) when someone threw hot coffee at him.

“Ow! Ow, that’s really hot! What did you do that for?” he shouted, and turned to face the person who had thrown it.

The fact that he hadn’t noticed her brought home to Yakky just how little he was taking in. This was nothing out of the ordinary when it came to the whys and hows of situations, but very rare when it came to sights, sounds and anything else his senses picked up. The girl was significantly older than the other computer users, and brought several adjectives to mind, ranging from ‘athletic’ to ‘deadly’ as well as the more obvious ones applied to tall blondes. Her scent – which Yakky could kick himself for missing – told him even more.

The werewolf raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“No,” Yakky snapped, grabbing some paper napkins and trying to get come of the coffee out of his shirt.

“Didn’t your parents teach you it’s not nice to invade someone’s territory?”

Yakky stared at the girl, who was two tables away (and a bloody good shot with a cup of coffee). “Territory?”

“Yes.” the girl answered, in a tone that Yakky would normally associate with Beansprout – that is, if he’d been thinking of her at that particular minute, which he wasn’t.

“In a café?”

“Personal territory, idiot. Were you raised by humans or something?”

“Well, yes, actually,” Yakky retorted, and began to eat his chicken nuggets.

The girl’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“My mother’s human. Was human,” Yakky corrected himself, and bit a nugget with particular venom.

“God, you poor bastard,” She walked over and sat down next to him. “Sorry about the coffee, I wouldn’t have done that if I’d known.”

"‘S OK,” Yakky muttered. “You only burned some of my skin.”

The girl paused, and then clumsily held out a hand. “My name’s Dee. You?”

“Yakky.”

“That’s a weird name, even by human standards.”

“Well, Dee’s not exactly normal, is it?”

“Short for Diana. Old werewolf name?” Dee watched his blank face, and shook her head in despair. “To do with hunting and the moon? Didn’t your dad teach you anything?”

“I don’t have much contact with my dad.”

“You don’t know anything about your roots?”

“Only my human roots.” Which involve supervillainy, Yakky added to himself.

Dee stood up. “Right, leave those chicken scraps and come with me.”

“Why?”

“I’m taking you to meet your people.”

“But my chicken scraps…”

“Hurry up!”

* * * 

“I don’t see many werewolves,” Yakky said, sitting with Dee in that necessity to fantasy series, the demon bar.

“Well, the place is pretty quiet till moonrise,” Dee replied, sipping a beer. “Listen, I’m really sorry to hear about your mum.”

“Thanks.”

“Killed the guy yet?”

“No,” Yakky said, feeling vaguely shocked at this, and then extremely annoyed with himself for feeling shocked.

“Good.”

“What?”

“Revenge is a human thing. Seems like you’ve got some of your instincts left, God knows how.”

“You’re really blunt, you know that?”

“Yes,” Dee said, bluntly, and finished her beer. Yakky had barely started his. “I don’t blame you for leaving, though.”

“Oh?”

“Those Faeries? They’re even less direct than humans. You know they’ve got this ancient belief that life is just a big story?”

“…yeah,” Yakky said. He’d never understood much of what Flibbage said. The reasons why were becoming gradually clear.

“Where’s the logic in that?”

“I don’t think logic and elves mix.”

“Poor sods.”

So logic’s a werewolf thing? Yakky thought. Am I logical?

“Still, they sounded all right,” Dee added thoughtfully. “Apart from the flagrant disregard of the rules.”

“What rules?”

“Well, that girl, Beansprout? Sounds like an alpha female to me. And J? From what you say, he’s definitely a beta male. You’re obviously the alpha male, so if she likes him instead, she’s an idiot.”
“Yeah, ‘if’,” Yakky muttered. A moment later, his mind caught up with him, and wondered if this was the werewolf form of flirting. Nah, he decided, it’d be far more direct. Oh well, flirting or not, he was sitting in a bar chatting to a very good-looking, if opinionated, woman, and Beansprout was…still with J. But if she knew where he was and who he was with…she wouldn’t actually give a toss. Yakky downed the rest of his beer.

“Things are much simpler with werewolves,” Dee continued. “Boy meets girl, boy bites girl on the neck, they all live happily ever after.”

Yakky contemplated what would happen if he tried to bite Beansprout on the neck, and winced.

Dee looked up just before a group of five other werewolves entered the bar. “Over here, guys!” she called.

“Hi,” Yakky greeted what he supposed was the pack. There was one very tall, very muscular boy who looked as if he had the subtlety and intellectual capacity of a sledgehammer. Must be the alpha male, Yakky thought. Maybe I should grovel or whine.

“You are?” the boy said.

“Yakky.”

“You’re half human.”

“Good guess.”

“This is Lance,” Dee interrupted, taking his arm in the universal gesture that adds ‘my boyfriend’.

Lance, Yakky thought. The nominal equivalent of a very large car.

He smiled brightly at Lance, and then at the other four werewolves. There was another tall girl, who was staring at Yakky with an expression that could corrode iron, and three smaller, worried-looking individuals whose demeanour screamed, or at least hesitantly suggested, ‘beta’. I’m getting the hang of this, Yakky thought.

“Did you finish your work?” the other girl asked Dee, as the others sat down. Dee nodded.

“What work?” Yakky asked, with interest.

Lance turned and glared at him. “Nothing to do with you.”

“Just a bit of research,” Dee told Yakky.

“You said we should keep it secret!” Lance exclaimed, turning back to Dee.

“Yeah, ‘cos I learned so much from that,” Yakky muttered.

“You did?” The other werewolves were staring at him, puzzled.

“Uh…no,” Yakky said.

The bartender, who, like all generic demons, apparently had a horrible skin condition, brought another round of drinks. There was an awkward silence as they sipped them, or, in Lance’s case, quaffed.

Dee smiled apologetically. “Listen, I’m sorry. We’ve – well, I’ve probably given you the impression we don’t like humans much.”

“Oh, you think?”

Another flicker of confusion. “Yeah. Anyway, that wasn’t true till lately.”

“How come?”

Dee glanced around. A few demons were brawling and some goths in the corner were trying not to look terrified, but no-one seemed to be paying attention to the werewolves. “The NGSPIB-”

“Don’t tell him!” Lance shouted, attracting attention.

“If I don’t, he’ll find out when they pick him up!” Dee snapped. “Go and get me a packet of peanuts.”

“You too,” the other girl told one of the beta boys.

Hmm, Yakky thought, my taste in women suddenly becomes clear.

“The NGSPIB have this programme against non-human minorities,” Dee continued. “They’ve been rounding up werewolves and demons since the New Era began, and we think they might have some plan for Faerie.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m a hacker. That was the work I was doing when you arrived.”

“You don’t look like a hacker,” Yakky said before his brain caught up with his mouth.

Dee grinned. “Thank God, or it’d be a silver bullet through my heart. Anyway, they’ve convinced everyone that we’re evil baby-eating monsters, so there’s quite a bit of conflict.”

“Such as?”

“Intended lynchings.”

“What do you mean, intended?”

“They’d lynch us if they could catch us.”

“Oh. How did that happen? My mum must’ve got on OK with werewolves.”

“Mainly television. You should have seen Buffy Season 8, it was like Nazi cinema.”

“Why do they round us up?” Yakky asked.

“God knows. That’s what we’re trying to find out, actually – so far all we know is they take us to some place called the Power Centre. We’re part of this resistance that began in Nepal, you see…well, we listened to their songs and then actually went out and did stuff.”

“Yeah, Dee, he doesn’t need to know this to avoid the NGSPIB,” the other girl interrupted.

“I’m from Nepal,” Yakky said quickly, attempting to distract them in case they decided he knew too much. Lance had finished the heady calculations of peanut-buying and was heading back over, with a distinctly unfriendly expression.

This seemed to be the most interesting thing he’d said so far, at least to those who weren’t Dee. “I don’t suppose you know anyone called Oz?” one of the betas mumbled.

“Well, yeah, he’s my dad.”

Yakky would remember this as the one time in his life people were stunned into an awed silence by something he said.

“Your father’s Oz?” Lance repeated.

“Well done.”

“So your mother must be the witch,” the other girl mused, looking slightly less offended by his existence. “I heard she was fairly nice.”

In a moment of confidence-inspired idiocy, Yakky shook his head and said “Nah, my mum was called Buffy.”

There was another silence, but it was far from being awed.

“He’s one of them!” Lance roared, leaping to his feet.

“Sit down and shut up, Lance, he hardly spent any time with her,” Dee told him, to no avail.

“What?” Yakky protested helplessly.

“You’re planning to betray us to the NGSD – NS – them!” Lance shouted.

“Oh, sure, ‘cos while they hate werewolves they just love us halfbreeds,” Yakky retorted.

“What do you mean?” Lance exclaimed. “You keep saying one thing and meaning something else!”

“Hang on, I think I’ve heard of this…it’s this human thing…I think it’s called sar-cazle,” one of the betas piped up.

“Sarcasm,” Dee said heavily.

“And I learned from the best,” Yakky commented.

“You might be half-werewolf,” Lance snarled, giving up on the intricacies of Yakky’s second-hand sarcasm “but the other half’s that evil bitch Buffy!”

It had been a long, traumatic day. Yakky was tired, hungry, and slightly tipsy. Besides, he’d heard one too many slurs on his mother’s good…well, very tarnished and bloodstained, even he admitted – name.

So he picked up an empty beer bottle and smashed it over Lance’s head. Only then did he realise that this was not a sensible thing to do to a full werewolf who was a clear foot taller than himself.

Lance blinked at him, slightly stunned. Yakky heard low growls from the other werewolves, with the exception of Dee, who was glancing from him to Lance with a flawless poker face.

Folk, he thought.

“Now we don’t want any trouble…” began the short, bulgy-eyed man who was cowering behind the bar.

Lance picked up a chair.

Folk folk folk! Yakky thought, and began to back away from the table, smiling. “Sorry…uh…human custom…”

Seconds after he broke into a sprint for the door, he learned that Lance was just as accurate a thrower as Dee.

Seconds after that, he learned how painful it was to be pounced on by a full-grown werewolf.

The assembled demons began watching in mild amusement. There was usually nothing particularly interesting about watching werewolves fight, but this one was entertaining, as the smaller of the two was trying to crawl away across the floor, shouting “Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean it! Ow!” while the bigger one attempted to tear out his throat.

“Humans,” sneered the other girl. Dee shot her a look.

Yakky was already bleeding from several flesh wounds, and considered himself incredibly lucky that Lance hadn’t hit his jugular yet. He tried to wriggle towards some of the clusters of demons, in case Lance accidentally hit them and they took offence, but they drifted away as soon as he came close, something that hadn’t happened to Yakky since his childhood.

OK, he thought, curling up into a small defensive ball instead. What would Beansprout do?

As soon as he stopped moving, Lance raised his arm, about to deal a death blow to the back of Yakky’s neck-

-and Yakky rolled over and kicked very hard towards the ceiling. Unfortunately for Lance, his groin was in the way.

While he was still howling, Yakky stood up, grabbed the length of two by four that the bartender was now clutching, and proceeded to batter Lance according to the Beansprout school of combat (don’t stop hitting till they stop moving). Not being Beansprout, he had some compassion and stopped when Lance began to whimper like a puppy.

“Um,” he said, glancing around the room. “Sorry about that.”

The werewolves were staring at him in terrified amazement. Dee was still unreadable.

“I’ll be going, then,” Yakky mumbled, and sidled out.

Night had fallen, and Yakky sighed as he began to trudge along the darkened street. People who had noticed which bar he’d left stepped hurriedly out of his way; those who hadn’t tried to steal his wallet. He let them, seeing as they weren’t going to find one.

“Hey!”

He stopped on the corner, and glanced back. Dee caught up with him, and smiled sheepishly.

“You don’t have to go.”

“Not if I don’t mind Lance tearing me to pieces, which I do.”

“He won’t give you any trouble.”

Yakky stared at her in disbelief.

“You beat him. It’s an assertion of power thing…mostly testosterone, really. You could stay with us. You don’t look like you have anywhere to go.”

Yakky shook his head. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

“If you’re sure. There’s a motel up the road, they’re pretty cheap.”

Cheap probably didn’t mean free, Yakky thought, but he’d worry about that tomorrow.

"If you’re ever in the area, I’ll probably be at the bar. Visit us.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Yakky demanded. “I just beat the crap out of your boyfriend!”
Dee gazed at him for a second, and then smiled. “Have a chat with your dad some time soon,” she said, and, to Yakky’s astonishment, kissed him on the cheek. “Seeya.”

“Yeah,” Yakky answered, as she jogged back to the bar.

* * *

In the motel room, Yakky flicked disinterestedly through the channels, most of which were showing hardcore porn or I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here! repeats. He stopped on a music channel, which, like many of the others, had a nauseatingly pro-oppressor title. This one was the ‘We Love the NGSPIB Network!’

Yakky hummed along half-heartedly to REM’s It’s the End of the World as we Know It while making himself a cup of instant coffee. Suddenly, the music cut out, and the dulcet tones of Voiceover Man (whose deep American voice has introduced trailers for many, many years, usually with the opening lines ‘This fall…’) announced ‘This minute…breaking news!’

“Hello viewers! On the We Love the NGSPIB Network we have news of another brilliantly fiendish action by our enigmatic but praiseworthy overlords…Yes, they’ve captured two of our planet’s most wanted rebels, Beansprout Jones and her accessory Flibbage of Faerie!…”

Not to be continued…because this slots right back into the series. How convenient.