Quinn Shalom...

I was glad we owned a propane stove to make coffee on, but I was really surprised I was not hungover worse. The acrid smell of propane and match seemed so much stronger than it ever had before. The mug heated my hands as the coffee burned down my throat. Sitting at the kitchen table for the second time in twelve hours, I opened Kenneth's laptop bag, looking for any answers. There was a lavender envelope taped to a Ziploc bag of red and orange M&Ms.

The card said,

Just because it plays our song and is your favorite candy.

Love, your Englishman.

I knew this message was left in case the worst happened. Kenneth wasn't English. I never called him an Englishman; he was of Norwegian descent. And I didn't eat M&Ms. He and Molly loved them, but I didn't like them, I never liked them. Red and orange M&Ms were the ones affected by the chemical contamination. I listened very carefully to a song that I had never heard before. I opened his laptop and was surprised to find it still had a charge and bars. So, I googled the strange song, called Shatter Me.

On YouTube, I watched as a woman in a snow globe played violin while another one sang. It showed the snowglobe shattering, and suddenly I realized what Kenneth wanted me to do. I hurried upstairs to our bedroom. When Kenneth started working for the Environmental Purification Project, he brought me home a musical snowglobe from England. A ballerina with a violin. It played the same song as the beginning of the video.

I shook as I held it in my hands, looking for any way to open it. Frustrated, the voice in my head said to smash it but I couldn't. I never collected or cared for snowglobes, but Kenneth bought it for me.

'BREAK IT!' the voice shouted.

'No, please, I don't want to, he gave it to me,' I begged it.

'Shalom, he bought it as a message, he wanted you to shatter it. The video shows to break it. Now do it.'

I couldn't argue with the voice. I shouldn't be arguing with the voice. I knew I must have cracked, but the voice kept telling me I wasn't crazy.

"Well, sane people don't talk to themselves, much less argue with themselves." I yelled at it in my empty house.

'You're not crazy, I'm your wolf. You need to trust me if we are going to live through this.'

'What do you mean you're my wolf? You're that monstrous thing I turn into?' I couldn't keep the horror from my tone.

'Yes, actually. I have always been here, you just ignored me until you were bitten and changed, like your mother. Your father was a wolf too.' She sounded so calm as she destroyed every belief I ever held about myself.

I always thought I was just a normal human. My hands flinched and shattered the snowglobe on the floor.

"Why did you do that?" I screamed at her, as I knelt next to the mess.

Picking up the tiny ballerina I noticed there was a key inside the pedestal. It was to a safety deposit box, the name of a bank only a few miles away. A bank we didn't use.

'I told you so, let's go. I want the truth about why our mate murdered our children and chosen one, so I can shove it down his throat before I rip it out.'

The hateful venom of her tone made me terrified of the monster inside. Suddenly, I felt my bones breaking as my skin erupted with fur. I couldn't stop the scream that came out.

′It will be okay, the more we shift the faster and less painful it will become. ′

A dark brown paw clawed at the key and the wolf's mouth picked it up. In moments, we were running through our ruined community toward the bank.

The front doors were askew; one was ripped from its hinges then propped back up. Inside were a dozen dead. She shifted back into my skin and I picked up the key, the vault was open, so I just walked in, seeking the number that matched the key. It required a second key.

I went looking for Rich, I knew he was here because he wasn't at the tournament to see Rich Jr's fight at the dojo. He was laying on the floor of his office, punctures in his neck, but almost no blood. I felt so wrong taking the keys from his body, so I covered him with the tablecloth off a loan brochure display. His son and mine were best friends, they were going as Sans and Papyrus for Halloween, some cartoon game brothers from a game called Undertale. I fought the urge to cry for our sons. Halloween was only a few days away. There would be no neighborhood party, or decorations, or children dressed as monsters this year. We never knew monsters were real, and that they were dressed as us all along.

I took the trench coat from his chair and put it on before going back into the vault because walking around naked kind of freaked me out even if I was all alone there. In the safe deposit box, there was a letter and two more keys that opened two more boxes filled with papers, zip drives, medical files, all his research from the last several years. I went to the file room next to Rich's office and got a cardboard box. Putting everything in it, I fingered an envelope from the first box, on the outside it said,

"My heroine,

Get to the safe house before you read this letter.

If you are reading this, the worst has happened.

Take time and study my work. The answer is there.

Trust no one. I did it all for us and our kids.

PLEASE Believe I have always loved only you,

Your Norseman."

There was a house key taped to the front and an address a few hours south. I put the box by the door and shifted into my wolf, we ran home. We needed the car.

VvvvvV

My wolf growled slightly and backed away from the door as we got to the house. There were voices inside. Two intruders were upstairs. My wolf skulked into the kitchen and picked up Kenneth's laptop with her teeth. She tucked it into the bag before biting the handle securely. She padded silently to the door as we listened.

"Well, a female has been here in the last day, she slept in this bed," a male voice said.

"But the one we're looking for?" a female asked.

"I don't know, maybe. Let's follow the scent trail and see where it leads."

My wolf turned and ran as hard as she could back to the bank, we both knew we had to get to the files and hide.

'Who were they?' I asked my wolf.

'A vampire female and a fae male, both are dark ones. If they catch us, they will probably kill us.' She made it back to the bank in half the time it took us before.

Barely stopping before we tumbled into my skin across the carpet, I jumped up and ran into the back-maintenance closet. Kenneth's laptop case dropped among the debris in the lobby. I was thanking the cleaning gods that there was Fabreeze as I doused myself.

'They are here,' my wolf whispered.

I crept forward and saw them enter the vault. Faster than I have ever moved, I ran and jumped over the counter. Shoving the heavy door shut, I turned the lock on the century old vault. The pounding started immediately.

'That won't hold them. We need to just flee.' My wolf insisted.

"But I wanted pictures of the kids and..."

'No, we are being hunted, there may be more. I'm sorry, Shalom, we can't go home again.'

Knowing she was right; I took Rich's car keys and used his Prius to get back to the airport. Wearing only Rich's trench coat, I put the box of files and Kenneth's laptop in the plane and got ready to take off. I hid his car in an empty hanger. Looking at the map, I knew I could fly over the pass and be there before sunset.

With a deep breath, I revved the small engine and pushed the throttle forward. A notch on the flaps and in 300 feet, I was airborne, flying west into the mountains. Turning to follow HWY 67 south until I had to turn across the mountains to follow 96 West. Following the snow-covered roads from the air was hard and I almost missed the turn south at old state 69. Flying through the mountains in late October was so much harder than when I learned to fly over flat fields in the warm summer.

VvvvvV

By the time I landed, I was terrified and exhausted. I was forced to do a stall-landing of the plane because there was deep snow covering the runway. Despite the low speed, the small Cessna still flipped over and slid to a stop before I crawled out into the snow, shaken but alive. Pulling out luggage and the box of files, I trekked to the closest buildings. Everyone inside the control building was dead. They had been violently torn to pieces, like the dead in the city.

I questioned whether or not I wanted to stay here but I had no way to leave and I wanted to see the house. The third set of keys from the dead yielded a jeep that started, so I dug it out, then I drove toward the address on the envelope.

I got out to admire the tiny A-frame log cabin. The key unlocked the door. There were pictures of our family on the walls. In the kitchen, on an old propane refrigerator was a note;

"Dear Quinn and kids,

Hope you enjoy your new home.

Stay here and stay safe until the war passes.

There are so many things I wish I could tell you.

YOU ARE THE ONES I LOVE ABOVE ALL.

Love, Dad/Kenneth"

I sat down shaken.

Kenneth expected me to make it here with the kids. We once talked about the need to evacuate in case of disaster or civil war or whatever, but I never put much stake in it. He had evidently, because he made a safe place for us, and I failed to save our children. He expected a war and I ignored the warnings and made hot cocoa while death stalked our family.

I cried as I lit the heater. Taking out another bottle of the old lady's whiskey and a shot glass, I started drinking on an empty stomach. Dressed in warm clothes left by my murdered husband, I warmed a can of stew. The voice of my insanity, my wolf, insisted that I needed to eat.

The sun was long set, the moon was peeking through the trees at the top of the ridge to the east when I settled on the couch to read the letter. It smelled of his cologne and skin. I always loved the way he smelled. Crying while reading his blocky script about how we first met, how he knew from the first cup of coffee I served him in that little cafe that he loved me. How I saved him from being mugged, about our courtship, our marriage and how happy it made him every time one of our children was born. How privileged he felt to know what happened to my family and aunt. He would always love how courageous I was. It was the story of us in his words, he made me sound braver than I was.

The second page talked about his work and how dangerous it was to us and how he would do anything to protect us, reminding me what he said about the M&Ms. That the kids and I were orange and yellow M&Ms and at risk.

He described Purity Project, which wasn't an environmental clean-up group at all, but a secret government-funded project to preserve the pure human genome from contamination by Non-human species. Confessing, he was secretly working with an agent of the Werewolf monarchy and a Fae entrepreneur to keep us safe, to keep all nonhumans and genome carriers safe because it was the right thing to do.

On the last line of the third page, he wrote that he sold his soul and traded his body to keep us safe. The fourth page was tear-stained, and I wished to God I had never read it... because it shattered the few fragile pieces of my world I had left. I don't think anything could ever bring my soul back to life.

Kenneth confessed, in painful detail, to having a several-years long affair with a woman called Aliza Abbott, who was director of the Purity Project. He used his charm and good looks to move up to the position of research director and gain access to all projects, making changes that would protect people who carried the Non-human genomes, people like me and the kids. He begged for my forgiveness for his infidelity. For all the times he had fucked her, claiming he never made love to her the way he did me. He apologized for having me sterilized with a procedure called an oblation, believing she would have me killed if I became pregnant again. He apologized again for not telling me the truth, knowing a third child was something I desired. I did not realize claws had come from my fingertips until I saw them sticking through the paper.

The last lines almost killed me.

"I swear, by all that is holy, she meant nothing to me.

I am so sorry, my heroine, for my betrayal.

Please keep our children safe and tell them how

much I loved them.

Remember the good times, make new memories

in your new home...

My Quinn, I love you and only you for all time,

Kenneth."

Somehow I managed to fold up the letter and set it aside. He may have betrayed me, but I failed him and our children, and now I was pregnant with a monster because I was taking fertility treatments against his wishes. I vowed this place would never be my home. I didn't remember taking off my clothes or closing the door behind me. I only remembered the pain of my bones breaking and fire burning across my skin as my fur erupted. Then I ran through the snow until I almost couldn't drag myself up the steps at dawn. Inside, I collapsed and slept. I was broken. Shattered. Ruined.

VvvvvV

Four days later, I drove back to the closest town and broke into the library next to the public school. I took all the books on biology, genetics, physiology, and everything on wolves and werewolves. The town looked looted, like a homicidal riot occurred. I remembered a movie I wouldn't let Miles go with his friends to see, The Purge. This could be a set for it, or for the Walking Dead.

Welcome to the dystopia. My wolf said sadly, and I wondered how much she knew of our world.

She answered, I know everything you know, we are the same.

I took all the Fabreeze and Odorban from the hardware store and grocery and all food that I could scrounge that wasn't over-processed pseudo-food. The things that passed for sustenance in the markets made me shudder. It concerned me that the liquor store had been burned, along with the police station. My wolf and I were uneasy until we left. Others had been here, and we didn't know if they were friendly or crazy.

I stopped back at the West Silver Airport and dragged the Cessna off the runway. There were several small planes parked in a hanger. Two of them started and so I prepped them, just in case I needed to leave in a hurry. I had no idea where I would be going, only that I needed to be able to keep moving. I didn't even know what I was running from exactly, and that made me feel more alone.

I'm a monster afraid of monsters. I thought morosely.

'We are not a monster!' My wolf huffed in my head, she hated it when I called us a monster. We argued about it all the time, so I ignored her.

Over the next several days, we worked on changing between my skin and her fur faster. She said she would tell me when we couldn't do it anymore because of our pup. When I told her, I didn't care if it lived or died, she stopped talking to me for a week, then she told me, I need to get over how we came to be pregnant and be grateful that we were after what Kenneth did to us. She felt betrayed by him as I did. I believed my life was a lie. I was so confused when I thought of Kenneth; I loved him, and I hated him. I wished more than anything that he was alive so I could kiss him one last time before I killed him with my bare hands. My wolf wished she knew who our mate was so she could kill him for killing our pups that night. She always thought of Molly and Miles as our pups and not just my children. I didn't question it.

My wolf and I listened to the news reports about the Revelation Night on the radio every night. It was obvious they were looking for a scapegoat and they decided my husband was it. Dr Kenneth Phillips would be public enemy number one if he wasn't already dead. No one came forward to defend him, but then, no one knew the truth he told me in his last moments.