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The scent of old paper and dust was a welcome shield. It blocked out the other smells—the exhaust fumes from the 101 freeway, the greasy tang of a thousand street food vendors, the faint, ever-present sweat of fear that rose from a city of millions. Here, in the cavernous silence of the forgotten church library, Jack Russell could almost pretend he was just a man.
His sanctuary was a relic, a Spanish Revival church deconsecrated decades ago and left to rot until a forgotten society of bibliophiles had filled it with the written word. Now, the pews were gone, replaced by iron shelves that stretched towards the vaulted, shadowed ceiling. The only light came from a single green-shaded banker's lamp on a heavy oak desk, casting a pool of warm illumination over a spread of crumbling texts.
Jack moved through the aisles with a predator's silence that was, for the moment, entirely his own. His fingers, calloused and strong, traced the spines of leather-bound volumes—treatises on Balkan folk magic, transcripts of medieval witch trials, obscure botanical guides to poisonous flora. This was his real work. Not fighting, not hunting. Understanding. Understanding the curse that had been his birthright.
A faint, familiar itch bloomed across the skin of his forearm. He didn't need to look to know the shallow cut from last night's skirmish with a vampire's thrall had already sealed itself, the skin knitting together without a scar. The healing factor was a passive, constant reminder of what he was. Peak human conditioning. A consolation prize for the damnation.
His phone vibrated on the desk, a stark, modern intrusion. The screen lit up with a name: Elsa Bloodstone. A ghost of a smile, thin and devoid of any real humor, touched his lips. It was never good news when Elsa called, but it was rarely boring.
"Bloodstone," he answered, his voice a low, measured baritone that fit the silence of the library perfectly. He cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear as he carefully reshelved a folio of 18th-century woodcuts depicting werewolves. The artist had gotten the claws all wrong.
"Jack. Are you brooding?" Elsa's voice was crisp, British, and laced with her trademark impatience.
"It's called cataloging, Elsa. There's a difference." His eyes, a calm and perceptive brown in the lamplight, scanned the shelves, always cataloging, always ordering the chaos.
"Right. Well, un-catalog yourself. I need you. There's a situation at the Griffith Park Observatory."
Jack's body went still. The air in the library seemed to grow thicker, heavier. The shield of paper and dust felt suddenly flimsy. "The Observatory," he repeated, his tone flat. "That's a very public place. A landmark."
"Which is why it's a problem. It's not a nest of ghouls or a rogue wendigo. It's… subtler. And it's getting worse by the hour."
"Define 'subtler.'" Jack's gaze drifted involuntarily to the large, lead-framed window. The sky beyond the stained glass was deepening to a bruised purple. Twilight. His least favorite time of day. The line between man and beast felt thinnest then, a fragile membrane waiting to be torn.
"People are going in and not coming out. Not as they were, anyway," Elsa explained, her tone all business. "They emerge… different. Agitated. Primal. There are reports of increased strength, aggression, and a… a feral glow in their eyes. The police have it cordoned off as a potential gas leak or mass hysteria, but my sources detected a residual energy signature. It's celestial. Lunar."
The word hung between them, a physical weight in the quiet library.
Lunar.
Jack felt the familiar, cold knot tighten in his gut. Deep within, behind his ribs, the thing in the cage stirred. Not with the mindless rage of the full moon, but with a low, curious interest. A prickling of awareness. It was always listening, always feeling.
"How long?" he asked, his voice dropping even lower.
"The first incident was two nights ago. A minor spike. But tonight… Jack, the moon is waxing gibbous. It's ninety-two percent full."
He closed his eyes. The math was simple and terrifying. Two more nights. Forty-eight hours until the celestial clock struck midnight and the full moon ripped his consciousness away, leaving the monster in charge. He had planned to be deep in the San Gabriel Mountains by now, locked in a silver-reinforced cell only Morbius and Elsa knew the location of.
"I can't go anywhere near a lunar energy source that strong, Elsa. You know what it does to me." A flicker of the old anger, the profound unfairness of it all, sparked within him. He was the one they called when the monsters came out, but he was also the one who had to hide from the goddamn sky.
"I do. Which is why I'm not asking you to go inside. I need you on the perimeter. Your senses are better than any of my gadgets. You can smell a lie, you can hear a heartbeat skip from a hundred yards. I need to know what we're dealing with before I go charging in. If this is some cult trying to artificially create werewolves or trigger early transformations…" She let the sentence hang. "You're the best early warning system in the world."
He was silent, his gaze fixed on the darkening sky through the window. The promise he'd made to himself, to his mother's memory, was to protect people. To use the curse as a shield, not just a weapon. If people were being changed, turned feral… he had a responsibility. But the risk… the risk was catastrophic. If that energy field pushed him over the edge in the middle of Griffith Park, the body count wouldn't be a handful of cultists. It would be families, tourists, children.
"Jack?" Elsa's voice was uncharacteristically soft. "I know what I'm asking. But I don't have anyone else who understands this like you do."
He let out a long, slow breath, the air leaving his lungs in a controlled stream. Control. It was always about control.
"Send me the coordinates and everything you have on the energy signature," he said finally, the words tasting like ash. "I'll meet you at the south perimeter in one hour. But the moment I feel it pushing against my will, the moment the beast even twitches in a way I don't like, I'm leaving. No arguments. No debates."
"Wouldn't dream of it. See you soon, Jack."
The line went dead. The silence of the library rushed back in, but it was no longer peaceful. It was charged, waiting. The scent of dust and paper was now undercut by the electric smell of the storm to come.
Jack stood and walked to a heavy, iron-banded chest tucked away in the darkest corner of the library. He unlocked it with a key he wore on a chain around his neck, the metal cold against his skin. Inside, on a bed of black velvet, lay his tools. Not silver bullets or wolfsbane—useless trinkets for amateur hunters. But a set of reinforced, non-metallic body armor, a collapsible staff made of a near-indestructible polymer, and a small, custom-made medkit for the injuries silver wouldn't cause.
As he strapped on the armor, his fingers traced the faint, ghost-pain of a hundred old wounds. His eyes fell on a faded photograph tucked into the lid of the chest. His mother, Laura. Her smile was kind, but her eyes were sad, holding a secret she would take to her grave.
"Don't hurt Philip, Jack. No matter what. Promise me."
He had kept that promise. It was one of the few he had managed to keep.
He closed the chest, the lock clicking shut with a sound of finality. The man was going out into the night. The beast was coming soon. For now, they had to work together.
He slipped out of the library into the cool LA night. The city's symphony of sounds and smells hit him like a wall. But underneath the jasmine and the exhaust fumes, carried on a wind from the north, he could already smell it.
Fear. And the cold, clean, terrifyingly familiar scent of amplified moonlight.
The drive to Griffith Park was a study in tension. Every stoplight felt like a cage. Every pair of headlights in the rearview mirror was a potential threat. Jack navigated the streets with a focused calm, but beneath the surface, his senses were dialed to eleven. The faint, tinny music from a passing car was a screeching symphony. The greasy aroma of a burger joint was a stomach-churning wave of decay. This was the prelude, the curse's way of reminding him that the world of men was an assault on a nature like his.
He parked his nondescript sedan a mile from the Observatory, well outside the police cordon. The air here was different. Cleaner. The city smells were being overpowered by the pungent, iron-rich scent of the park's chaparral, the damp earth, and the pine from the distant trees. And underneath it all, that other scent. It was like the clean, metallic smell of the night sky after a rain, but twisted, amplified. It vibrated along his teeth and made the hair on his arms stand up. The lunar energy was a low, persistent hum, a sub-audible frequency that resonated directly with the wolf in his blood.
He moved through the shadows of the park with an unnatural silence, his dark clothing making him a ghost among the trees. He found Elsa exactly where she said she'd be, at a vantage point on a ridge south of the Observatory. She was a silhouette against the city lights, her posture ramrod straight, a pair of high-tech multi-spectrum binoculars held to her eyes.
"You're late," she said without turning around.
"I took the scenic route. Avoiding the boys in blue." Jack came to a stop beside her, his gaze immediately drawn to the target.
The Griffith Observatory was a stunning white monument, usually glowing like a beacon of science and reason. Tonight, it was dark. The police had cut the power, and their cordon of flashing red and blue lights at the bottom of the hill only served to highlight the building's eerie silence. But to Jack's eyes, it wasn't dark at all. A faint, shimmering silver aura clung to the structure, a visible manifestation of the energy Elsa had detected. It pulsed slowly, like a sleeping heart.
"See it?" Elsa asked, finally lowering her binoculars.
"I see it," Jack's voice was a gravelly whisper. "I can feel it. It's… aggressive. Not natural moonlight. It's been focused. Weaponized."
"My thoughts exactly. The police have reported twelve missing persons linked to the building in the last 48 hours. Eight have come back out. All were violent, incoherent, and displayed temporary superhuman strength before collapsing into comatose states. They're calling it 'Roid Rage Psychosis' in the press." She handed him a small, handheld sensor. "The readings are off the charts. It's not just energy, Jack. There's a carrier wave. A signal."
Jack took the device. The screen showed a chaotic mess of spectral lines, but one frequency spiked repeatedly, a complex, repeating pattern. It wasn't random. It was a broadcast.
"It's a command," he realized, his blood running cold. "It's not just triggering primal instincts. It's trying to issue a directive."
Before Elsa could respond, a new sound cut through the night. Not a siren, but a raw, guttural scream of pure rage, followed by the shattering of glass. It came from the eastern side of the Observatory grounds.
Jack's head snapped towards the sound. His pupils dilated, the brown of his irises thinning as a ring of molten gold ignited around them. The scent on the wind shifted. Now, over the ozone-and-moonlight smell, was the hot, coppery tang of human adrenaline, and the sour stench of mindless aggression.
"They're turning someone now," he growled, the words sounding less human.
"That's our way in," Elsa said, slinging a heavy, rune-engraved rifle from her shoulder. "The police are distracted on the west entrance. We go in from the east, contain the victim, and find the source."
"Elsa, that signal… if it can do this to a normal person…" He didn't finish the sentence. The unspoken truth hung between them: What could it do to me?
"Then we'll just have to be quick," she said, already moving down the slope with a hunter's confident stride. "Or you'll have to be strong."
Cursing under his breath, Jack followed. The hum of the lunar energy grew louder with every step, a siren song that was both repulsive and enticing. The beast within him was no longer just curious. It was leaning against the bars of its cage, listening to the music.
They breached the tree line and emerged onto the manicured lawns. The scene before them was one of surreal horror. A man, his clothes torn, was on his hands and knees in the middle of a shattered display case that had once held a model of the solar system. His body was contorted, muscles writhing under his skin like snakes. A low, continuous growl rumbled from his chest. His eyes, when he looked up, were wide, wild, and shone with a faint silver light.
"The eyes," Jack muttered. "It's the same."
The man—the victim—saw them. With a shriek that was more animal than human, he launched himself. He moved with a speed and ferocity no office worker from Pasadena should possess.
Elsa was ready. She sidestepped, using the butt of her rifle to strike him hard across the temple. It was a blow that would have knocked out a heavyweight boxer. The man just staggered, shook his head, and came at her again, slobber flying from his lips.
Jack moved. He didn't transform, but he used every ounce of his peak-human speed and strength. He intercepted the man, grabbing him in a clinch from behind. The man thrashed, his strength immense, his elbows digging into Jack's armored ribs. The coppery scent of his rage was overwhelming.
"The signal is telling him to fight! To destroy!" Jack grunted, struggling to hold him. He could feel the chaotic energy radiating from the man, a distorted, ugly echo of the power he himself contained. "It's in his head like a drumbeat!"
"Can you snap him out of it?" Elsa asked, readying a sedative syringe.
Before Jack could answer, a new voice, calm and amplified, cut through the night from the Observatory's main doors.
"I'm afraid that's quite impossible. The conditioning is irreversible."
Jack looked up, his arms still locked around the thrashing victim.
A man stood at the top of the steps, silhouetted against the pulsing silver aura of the building. He wore a pristine lab coat over an expensive suit. In his hand, he held a small, metallic device that glowed with the same malevolent light as the Observatory.
"The subject's basal ganglia have been permanently rewired by the Lunar Resonator," the man continued, his tone that of a lecturer disappointed with his students. "He is now a perfect engine of aggression. A testament to our work."
"Dr. Aris Thorne, I presume," Elsa spat, leveling her rifle at him. "Promethean Bioscience. You're under arrest for about a hundred different violations of the Supernatural Accords."
Thorne smiled, a thin, condescending expression. "Miss Bloodstone. And you've brought the pièce de résistance. Mr. Russell. The original article." His eyes gleamed with a fanatical light as he looked at Jack. "We've learned so much from studying your family. The Russoff curse is not a curse. It's a key."
Jack felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. He knows my name. He knows my family.
With a final, massive heave, the victim in Jack's arms broke free, his mind too far gone to be held. He scrambled away into the darkness, his howls fading into the night.
Thorne didn't seem to care. He raised the device in his hand. "You came to find the source of the signal? You've found it. This is just a remote. The main resonator is inside. And its output is about to increase by five hundred percent."
He pressed a button.
The world turned white. The silver aura around the Observatory exploded outwards in a blinding wave of pure, concentrated lunar energy. It was a physical force, a wave of pressure and light that smashed into them.
Elsa cried out, shielding her eyes. But for Jack, it was infinitely worse.
It was like being doused in gasoline and then lit on fire from the inside. Every cell in his body screamed in unison, not in pain, but in recognition. The beast in his cage didn't just lean against the bars. It slammed against them with the force of a freight train. The carefully constructed walls of his control, built over years of pain and meditation, developed hairline fractures.
He dropped to one knee, a guttural roar tearing from his throat. His vision swam, flickering between color and the stark, thermal shades of the wolf. He could feel his bones aching to shift, his teeth sharpening in his gums. The man was being submerged, the leash ripped from his hands.
"Jack!" Elsa's voice sounded distant, muffled.
He looked up, his eyes now fully glowing, his pupils slitting into those of a predator. Through the blinding silver light, he saw Dr. Thorne watching him with clinical fascination, taking notes on a data slate.
"Fascinating," Thorne's amplified voice echoed. "The subject's transformation is not binary. There are clear intermediate stages. The will is remarkably resilient. Note: The 'man' still fights the 'beast'. This conflict is the key to control."
The humiliation, the violation of being studied like this, poured gasoline on the fire inside him. The last thing Jack Russell saw before the beast took over was the smug face of the scientist who saw him as nothing more than a specimen.
The last thing he heard was his own voice, a half-snarl, half-scream of defiance, aimed at Elsa.
"RUN."
Then, the world dissolved into red.
To Be Continue...