[Friday Night, Washington State]

A bright white moon lit up the snow along the sides of the rocky mud road twisting through the pine forest. The road was a track only wide enough for a single vehicle, and led to a normally secluded cabin - a large 6 bedroom log cabin house, surrounded tonight by trucks, cars, a few campers, and a lot of loud music.

It was eleven o'clock and the party had been roaring since the convoy from WA State had arrived around eight. It was the first night of spring break and the core group of students were Phi Delta Kappa. The excuse for the week long debacle was a road trip to study the wolves in the area, but tonight it was all about alcohol, abandonment, and the carnival atmosphere of a well-isolated frat party. Sometime late tomorrow all but 14 would straggle back to civilization, the others to actually stay and study the wolves which roam free in the Cascades, here and across into Canada.

At one end of the building, behind closed doors in a quieter dining room, roughly 6 couples sat around a cheap folding table. Each person has a face down card in front of them, except for Britney, standing with her arms crossed, her face-up smiley face card on the table, beside another one just like it.

"It's night time, everyone close your eyes", said with quiet authority by a tall jock at one end of the table.

"Werewolves, open your eyes."

A sandy haired boy in blue eyes, bluejeans and a plain t-shirt and a boney, nervous looking girl at the other end of the table open their eyes. They sign to each other and then point to a red headed guy near the center of the table. The moderator nods.

"Werewolves close your eyes, Seer, open your eyes."

This time a girl with long black hair, a beautiful face, wearing a push-up under a tank top has her eyes open. She points to the female "werewolf" near her and is rewarded with a thumbs-up from the moderator.

- - - -

Someone puts in some Fleetwood Mac for Brian, who had a regular bar set up in the kitchen - complete with blenders and beer nuts. Besides the group in the back, there's a card game going, and two or three loose clusters where the few unpaired guests were sorting out their options. Shawn and Cindy had been making out on a couch, and eventually they both struggled up to their feet to weave through the traffic to a side door.

When they opened the door to go out they stopped in their tracks. A surprisingly large wolf stood right outside the door, as if investigating the party. The wolf growled through a shocking set of teeth and glared at the arrested couple. Neither had seen a wolf in the wild before, or had been this close to one, with nothing but frosty night air between them and the tense lupine mass of muscles and bared teeth.

"Whoa!", "Hey YO, everybody come check this wolf!"

But the wolf backed a few steps and galloped off through the tree line only paces away, vanishing beyond sight almost immediately.

Cindy and Shawn watched it go, with a few other students quick enough to see, closed the door and sat down at the table. As Brian delivers a couple of rum & cokes a lone shuddering howl and a disquietingly nearby chorus of answering howls silence the party. Then it's nervous laughter, head shaking, and the interest of the moment dissolves back into the normal flow like nothing ever happened.

- - - -

Outside the scene is violently wrong - the wolf silently trots to a small pack of 7 other wolves - but, surrounding what can only be a werewolf. He's standing erect among the wolves like a large black athlete covered with coarse black hair, grafted with an oversized wolf's head with red flecked black eyes, his posture and intensity betraying a maddening intelligence. Inhuman hatred and desire stares through the woods to the cabin, and a wolf's growl turns the wolf's black lips down on that awful head.

- - - -

The red headed guy and a boy with glasses are standing beside Britney, their smiley faced cards on the table. There's still nine "villagers" around the table with the moderator.

"It's daytime, everyone open your eyes.", the moderator pauses for effect and then points to John, "... and YOU have been torn apart by werewolves!"

Then everyone talks at once, trying to decide which one of themselves they will lynch this turn, killing them in hopes that they find a werewolf. Eventually, everyone agrees on the female "werewolf".

The moderator nods, turns to the girl and pronounces the communal doom, "You've been lynched by the mob, and you're dead!"

She stands and turns her card over to show a smiley face with fangs. Everyone cheers as she flips off the moderator and walks over to the other "dead". The smiley face with fangs holds the moderator's attention for a few seconds...

Suddenly, the world is replaced by screams, breaking glass, and shattering wood...

- - - -

[Daylight.]

Two police cars added to the riot of now ownerless vehicles in front of the cabin. Yellow tape everywhere. Bloody snow. A dead wolf - concussion. Inside and outside - 32 dead college students, all of them mauled to death by wolves, most of them partially eaten, one almost completely. The cabin is totally trashed. Wolf prints everywhere, you can see places where wolves drug bodies out into the snow to feed on. The stocky Lieutenant with the clipboard and cell phone stops suddenly as he finds again what he saw earlier.

"Yeah, these footprints over here. (Like I need this) Don't ask - don't say Jack, just get the pictures!"

[Noon.]

The ground is covered with body bags, two more police cars, a couple of ambulances. All DOA, officially "No comment pending further investigation". Another tow truck arrives, but this one has a passenger - Neil Tanner, one of the few reporters actually trusted by Lt. Bill Sperry, homicide investigation.

"Bill, My god, looks like a war zone! Gang war? - out here? - what've ya got - is that a wolf?"

Bill isn't talking - he just let's the reporter go on, and walks him around the front of the place, past the dead wolf to the line of body bags.

"Ok, Neil, take notes, but no pictures, an there's no release on this till we get a clear on it, savvy? First these two - pretty much all the same."

Lt. Sperry doesn't ever talk much, he pulls down a couple of zippers, and flips open the bags.

"shit, the hell - ya know wolves don't, oh, like break in and eat people right? has this happened before? shit."

Both bodies are more than mauled and partially eaten, they're young, recognizable, and about the age of the reporter's daughter. A man and a woman, both are only wearing torn bloody jeans and have bite marks and missing flesh all over their arms and upper bodies. Sperry points out how the marks show attacks from multiple angles, and rolls the woman over to show vertebrae from her broken back protruding through her skin. Sperry looks at Neal, who nods, and he closes the bags.

"I sure as hell know that damn wolves don't break peoples backs!"

"You haven't seen the guest of honor yet - this is strictly FYI - you understand? This guy is piece-parts."

The ashen reporter nods and follows the cop to a body bag which has been laid apart from the other. It's not zipped so the Lt unceremoniously flops it open. Neal starts to say something a couple of times, but finally turns away to retch. This is the body that was torn to shreds. The chest looks like it exploded, with the heart and some other organs gone. The head was separate and about a third of it was missing. One of the arms and both legs were also separated and mostly bare of flesh.

"You know, Bill, some people live their whole lives without ever seeing this crap. You know this doesn't make any kind of sense. What are you going to tell these kid's parents?"

"Neal - I don't know what I think, and I don't know what we'll tell parents, or when - You'll get our official take as soon as we get one, but I've got other questions to answer..."

"Like what really happened? and who?"

"Yeah, and don't forget, 'is it about to happen again?'".

- - - -

[Monday Morning, Seattle.]

...another body, I can't believe they found another one, next they'll be finding leftover pieces and calling me back out there...

Lt Bill Sperry was ranting to himself about the evils of cellular phones as he paid his way out of the IHOP. Glad to be on the outside of a good breakfast, he knew he wouldn't see any lunch.

It actually wasn't until around 4pm that he got back to the crime scene. He looked at the blacked remains of the cabin as he pulled over to the truck. Another kink in the case, someone had burned the place to the ground as soon as the police had left. Sperry'd been furious when he'd found out, but seeing the charred remains just made it seem unreal. He walked over to the ranger, who was in his truck reading a gun magazine and drinking coffee.

"Well, they said I needed to come out again - you found another body?"

"Yeah, but this ain't the fire, officer" (and I'm a clueless local)

"Poor girl was tied up and raped, and then left to freeze to death", as he got out of his truck, grabbed a radio, and sealed up his thermos.

Sperry followed the ignorant ranger only about 100 yards into the forest. The frozen corpse was stripped and tied spread-eagle. She'd had the snow brushed off, and a criss-cross texture of ice crystals blended with white skin turned blue and other colors by the freezing death. She'd been tied with shreds from her jeans, and not gagged. Her name was Cindy Taylor, the only known missing student thought to have been in the group - and coincidentally engaged to one Shawn Miller, a.k.a. 'Mr Piece-parts'.

He could tell that she had several lacerations, but was generally undamaged, and decided to let forensics discover the extent of the injuries. He was glad he had no explaining to do to the stupid ranger, and was also glad he couldn't get out on his cell phone. There was already an ambulance scheduled. He did his scene checks, talked only briefly to the drivers when they got there, made the long drive home and didn't sleep.

- - - -

[Tuesday, Noon.]

"Neal, this is Bill Sperry. Look you don't need to come in, I know Kim is there for spring break, but I wanted you to know the latest on the cabin slaughter. Yeah, umm-hmm, yeah - you sitting down? Well they did find some bite marks on her - wolf, like the others, the lacerations were probably from our psycho's claws, but listen ... I ordered a DNA on the semen for possible ID confirmation later - but it wasn't human, whoever did this made her take it from one of the wolves."

"You still there?"

"Yeah well listen - you keep it to yourself for now ok? The - NEAL! Neal, dammit LISTEN To me! - We are STILL INVESTIGATING this, and this guy is still out there, He's got access to the land, he's got trained wolves, he's done something really extreme and violent and he's not being ignored. I need you to keep this to yourself - listen... you're not recording this, right?"

"I didn't include you in my scene report. None of the cops there knew you, and nobody knows anyone, much less a reporter, has any of this info. Now I'll keep you up to date - everything, but I'm doing it off the record and I need you to keep quiet for now."

"Yes - directly in charge of the whole sha-bang, it's my new obsession. Yeah."

"Now, forget I called, till spring break's over, an then I'll bring you up to whatever I've got, OK? Yeah, sure, but don't hold your breath between calls - I'm still huntin for my first decent lead."

- End of Chapter One. -