Brendan could feel the centrifugal force pressing his body into the corner of the boot, into the wheel well, every time the car turned. But in the darkness he had no idea where the car was going. He was sure that the last one had been a right turn, but he had no idea how many there had been. He did not know the roads of the Industrial Zone well enough to know where they were going. He imagined some Alpha's lair, deep in the mountains. But he could hear the insistent horns of other cars, the sound of blaring music, and he knew he could not be far from where they had been travelling the day before yesterday.

He could hear his faint breathing. And Adrian's next to him. And the musty smell of the carpet in the boot. And the roughness of the rope binding his wrists and ankles. For now, that meant the world to him.

They had been roughly bundled into here not long after they had landed, and the journey back had immediately begun. The same roads that had been exhilarating in Adrian's truck were utterly intolerable bundled in the boot of a car.

He tried to listen to the people in front of them. Occasionally noise that sounded in conversation drifted back. But the other noises of the car made it an impossible task to parse what they were saying.

The car shuddered over a bump of some kind. The surface seemed to change. Rougher, with the occasional bump that caused the whole car to shudder. A badly repaired road, Brendan guessed. The car changed direction. The wheels bumped on something that made it change gradient- a ramp of some sort. It stopped. 

The car shifted on its springs as the occupants shuffled out. The doors slammed. Then there was the snick of a key in the lock, right next to Brendan's head. Light flooded the boot, and they were yanked roughly out of the car.

Too dazed to notice the pain, Brendan surveyed the scene. They had driven through a set of open gates into the wide concrete loading yard of what appeared to be a shuttered factory, surrounded by a rusty cyclone wire fence.

"Help will be on the way," their captor said, loosening the bonds on his legs. The ties around his hands stayed. Alpha Ralph had presumably already left. "Just wait here. Someone will be shortly to collect you."

They were chained to a pole next to a former loading bay. The pole had once held a sign delineating a parking bay. Brendan felt his hands shoved roughly behind, the snick and the grating of the handcuffs on top of the twine which already bound his hands and feet.

"Hang on," Brendan said. "How will we-"

The other werewolf glanced at his watch. "I gotta go. Catch you some other time. Toodle-oo!" He got back in the car with his friends. There was some wheelspin as the car drove through the gate and sped away.

Brendan looked around at the place where they had been left. Weeds sprouted liberally from cracks in the concrete pavement. The abandoned buildings were rusting hulks, the windows broken, at the edge of collapse. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He swore he saw movement in one of the windows.

A handcuff attached to the rope. Typical pack stuff. Not the most elegant solution, and they could probably figure out a way of sliding out, but he suspected that it would not be a problem. There would be someone coming to collect them soon. He eyed the entrance warily. All quiet on the western front. At least for the time being.

"This is a dump." Brendan muttered. Adrian nodded.

There was a sound of car engines from not far away. Something high-pitched. Revving.

"Can you move your fingers?" Adrian jiggled the handcuffs. "My phone's in my back pocket. It's out of reach for me. But if you move your hands down far enough..."

"I can try." He wriggled slightly, testing the give in the handcuffs, trying to slide them up the pole. That was not going to work. It was set into solid concrete, so there was no way they were going to push it over.

He moved downwards, ignoring the chafing of his wrists, further up, as far as he could go. He could almost reach it. Just a few centimetres away, but separated by a layer of cloth. The distance was taunting. Reaching forward he could just touch the hard surface of the phone in its pocket. He moved his hands up slightly, the handcuff stuttering on the smooth surface of the pole, its chain stretched to breaking point.

The pain on his carpal area was getting harder to ignore. He let go for a moment, taking in a deep breath, then another, until the pain subsided. Then he tried again, pushing forward, until he could reach the top of the pocket and get a grip on the very tip of the phone.

Slowly he eased the phone out of the pocket with the tips of his fingers.

Finally, after a few minutes of persistence, it tipped out of the pocket. By a miracle, Adrian managed to catch it. His hands were bound slight less tightly than Brendan's. 

He opened it. "Shit. Out of battery."

There was the sound of distant revving, slowly but noticeably intensifying.

"People do drag races here?" Brendan craned his neck in the direction of the sound.

"I wouldn't be surprised." Adrian glanced in the same direction. The movement chafed Brendan on the back. "We do like to splash our cash when we get the chance. It's not like there are any police around."

The revving got louder, until it was practically upon them. A convoy of three murdered-out Lamborghinis pulled into the yard. There was the grating sound of scraping front splitters.

"That little fucking rat..." Adrian muttered.

"What the hell?"

Adrian whistled. "That's George's car. Aventador SVJ. Clean."

"George?"

"Remember? Alpha George. He was at the presentation at the museum."

"That's not good, is it?" Brendan asked rhetorically.

"Bad, probably." Adrian answered anyway, watching as the driver's side scissor door lifted up, and George wiggled his portly frame out of the low-slung car. It was not a pretty sight. He probably thought he looked tough. Brendan thought he looked even more like an angry hamster than when he had seen him last. His underlings followed. All of them wore dark suits. They walked towards Brendan and Adrian.

He gestured to his underlings. They untied them and dragged them roughly to their feet. Adrian managed to hide his phone just in time. They weren't the smartest of goons.

Getting to his feet, Adrian extended his hand, but this gesture was rebuffed by George.

"Handshakes won't be necessary today, fellas." George said, broadly. His voice narrowed to a hiss. "You little asswipes." George practically spat out the words. "Do you know how much I had invested in Crescent City? This was going to be my comeback. And you've singlehandedly destroyed my vision, a vision of a better future-"

"Yeah, for the one percent of the one percent," Adrian retorted. This prompted a nudge from Brendan.

"What?" Adrian whispered as loudly as he dared.

"Can you stop it with the wisecracks?" Brendan whisper-shouted. "We're outnumbered three to one, and I swear to god they all have battle scars."

"How good are you at fighting?" Adrian whispered back.

"I took like one karate class when I was eight. Oh, and I punched my bully in the face in Year 9."

Adrian shrugged. "That's not too bad. Trust me, it's more experience than 99% of my students."

There was the sound of more engines. Two Escalades pulled up. George and his goons looked at the new arrivals. They didn't look too surprised, but there was an undertone of apprehension in their expressions.

"You brought backup?" Brendan couldn't help getting in a quip. "That seems a bit unnecessary."

"Shut your mouth," George retorted. He whispered to the suit next to him. They sized up the newcomers, who had got out and made a beeline for the other werewolves. "Sim. Wenger. What are you doing here?"

"We were just in the neighbourhood and we heard there was some, er, filth to dispose of,"

"We can handle this perfectly fine." George's face scrunched up.

"An extra pair of hands never hurts," the newcomer replied.

"I had $500,000 invested in Crescent City," his sidekick added. "I want payback. Pure and simple."

"Excuse me, but who are you guys?" Brendan interjected.

"I'm Alpha Simeon of the Nettle Meadow pack," The grey-haired guy introduced himself, "the strongest and most powerful pack in the world-"

"-no, you're not," Alpha George rebutted, almost before Alpha Simeon had finished his declaration. "You're not even the most powerful pack south of the Arrowhead. You got pummelled that time Salmon Creek took you on."

"Er, I think you'll find that we are," Simeon replied. "As ranked by the Corviston Times-Gazette, a most reputable publication."

"That was a satirical list, you utter moron..." The conversation was drowned out by the noise of another car pulling up next to Alpha Simeon's convoy. A Lexus. There was a whirr as a retractable step unfolded.

All eyes were on the tall, grey-haired gentleman who stepped out.

"What are you doing here?" George said, his eyes narrowing in recognition.

"I heard someone was being rather confident with their claim to being the strongest pack in the world," The guy said, calmly, as six of his pack members got out behind him.

"I was not bragging," George retorted. "I was only stating a truth universally acknowledged." 

"I don't know who the fuck you're kidding, Georgy Porgy. You wouldn't know good leadership if it invaded your pack."

"What the fuck did you just call me, Clayton?"

Clayton shrugged. "I don't see the point of the outrage, George. I was just stating a truth universally acknowledged."

"You shut your mouth." George scrunched up his face in indignation.

"You shut your mouth."

More expensive cars were pulling in, and more doors slammed as more and more beer-bellied werewolf top brass tumbled out. The yard was beginning to resemble the front of a prestige car dealership.

"We're the strongest and most feared pack in the world!"

"We are the most powerful and influential pack in the world!" George declared. "And I'll fuckin' prove it, right here!"

"Well that can't be true!" Several dozen other voices yelled back at him. "Because that would mean that we're the second most powerful and influential pack in the world!"

"Wait-"

"But that means-"

"Well, maybe we're not the most powerful, but we're definitely the most feared-"

"Yeah, we totally fear your venison casserole-"

"You hillbillies shut the fuck up about our venison casserole!"

"You shut the fuck up!"

"You shut the fuck up!"

The blades of a helicopter drowned out the conversation just as it fell into complete anarchy, as four heavily tattooed, musclebound figures rappelled from a black chopper hovering above. "We are the Biloxi Pack from Mississippi," said the presumed leader, in heavily Southern drawl. "And we are the most powerful and feared werewolf pack in the world."

Adrian stared at them, in a mixture of confusion and disbelief. "I refuse to believe these aren't just roided-up humans cosplaying as wolves."

A wizened old guy stepped into view on the roof. Brendan's initial bewilderment at his sudden appearance was immediately quashed by the hush that went through the crowd. Quite a few of the wolves stood up to attention and saluted, like they had just met their old drill sargeant. "Who's he?" Brendan squinted at the wizened figure.

"Tobias Wethermore." Adrian said, reverently. "The man the myth, the legend."

Wethermore drove his walking stick into the roof. Brendan actually heard the sheet metal dent. The noise reverberated around the loading bay. Brendan saw several Alphas flinch. Some of them looked like they were on the verge of breaking into tears as Wethermore read out the rules.

Everyone was deathly silent, poised in battle, as Wethermore held out his fingers in a countdown. Three. Two. One. Go!

The entire group charged forward into battle. The sounds of suits ripping and shifting, followed by growling and roaring as the participants reverted to their animal forms. The ground shook as bodies collided in bone-crushing collision after bone crushing collision. 

Brendan watched as a dismembered leg was flung from the melee.

Adrian shook his head. "This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen."

"I agree," Brendan said. "Let's just go home."

They walked past the cars and through the open gate in the cyclone-wire fence, leaving the carnage behind them. This was a gritty industrial part of town. The sidewalks were crumbling and most of the parked cars seemed to have at least one odd-coloured body panel. Across the street the tin shacks of a rogue camp stood behind a fence. It felt difficult to believe that Wythaven was just fifteen minutes away.

"There'll be a payphone around here." Adrian said, just as the twins' car rounded the corner. "Oh, speak of the devil." Adrian muttered, stepping out onto the road to flag down his cousins.

 The window rolled down to reveal Aiden. "What the fuck happened there?"

"We heard the reports on the radio and we just knew you had something to do with it," Bellan yelled from the front passenger seat. "So we drove here."

"They seem to be having some clan squabbles." Adrian said, fitting himself into the cramped backseat. "Don't know what, exactly."

"They're all fighting again?"

"Yes." Brendan got in after him. Aiden floored it. Brendan was only too glad to be leaving this wretched place.

"Awesome," Bellan smiled.