Crap. We were so close. Just once I would have liked to have kicked the tar out of those pure bastards. I don’t know what people’ll are gonna hear about all of this, that’s why I’m writing all of this crap down. Somebody’s gotta set the record straight. I don’t know who’s left; my totem says that I’m probably the last uratha in town. Crap.

I ain’t no Cahalith, words don’t fall from my lips all pretty like. I don’t do stories, and if you don’t like it, then fuck you! How’s that for pretty talking?

We used to run out of a little locus downtown. It wasn’t much, but it was ours. We kept it clean, ran off the mooches and sneaky spirits, the usual. It’s a living. But we kept getting shit from the Pures all the time.  We got together every month to trade Intel and stuff, each time there were missing wolves, smaller packs. That’s the way it was with us, surrounded on four sides in Murfreesboro, Ashland City, Gallatin, and Fairview. Its tough, but that’s how it is when you’re uratha.

Then we got ourselves a plan.

Kyros said that there was a way to get the drop on the Pures. Said he knew about a raid they planned. Nothing big, just a few packs. But it would be our chance to hit them where they lived and make ‘em bleed. Revenge for all of our lost cubs, mates, and friends!

We wanted our payback. We deserved it!

It took some time we needed to gather the packs. Nobody in the city wanted to miss out on this. Everyone had a grudge. But we also needed each wolf to get that big win. If we tried it with less than all hands, we ran the risk of getting our tails chomped. Kyros and some of the New Moons ran recon night after night. It all looked so good.

We wanted to play it smart. Carstairs, the alpha of the 4th avenue pack, got deep into the strategy. He thinks he is some kind of general. I didn’t care, let the rest of the elders and rahu plan their crap. I’m a judge, and I wanted to lay into some hides with some serious sentencing.

Monica and Dusty got the shamans together and did their war dance. Fetishes were made, rituals we cast. No one cared about whose pack was feuding with who, or any of that bullshit. It was all about the job. Pack elders worked with every wolf, no matter what their history, and the younger ones scurried about making sure the old vets had what they needed.

Nothing was going to stand in our way, not now. The plan was foolproof. We were as ready as we had ever been. United. Invincible!

We were so fucked.

Kyros wanted us to go out in waves. There were too many of us to go in one big group, without being seen. He had a point. So we split the whole thing up. New moons and runners first, the rahu and other ass kickers second, and then the rest of the elders and shamans last. We gathered in a nasty smelling tenement downtown and waited for the sun to set. No point in letting the humans freak by seeing a horde of wolves racing through the countryside. I felt the blood pounding in my veins as some of my packmates and I ran through the sparse woods and hills.

The first inkling of a warning came as we charged through a particularly heavy patch of bushes. It gave great cover, which is why we picked it, but it was a bitch to move through fast. A warning howl sounded from one of the Centennial Park irrakas, I think her name was Angela something-or-other. Crap. Little thing was barely past her first change. She was the only one who gave us any warning and I can’t even remember her name. Her cry was cut short and the last anybody heard was a frightened yelp.

We fought hard through the thicket, trying to find our packmates, our friends. Finally we made it to the edge of the woods and looked up at the hillside. In the gloom of the overcast, moonless night, the top of the hill was just a smudge pot of shadow. It took me a few seconds to realize that the hill wasn’t still. Great smoky wisps rippled down the hillside like water. It wasn’t till I heard the massed snarls that I realized that the Pure Ones had laid a trap of their own.

I had never seen so many werewolves in one place before. The nasty gleam in their eyes was almost like a jagged line in the darkness. The sound of their growls sounded like the whole world wanted us dead. Crap.

They charged and I shifted to Dalu. My axe felt like a lead weight in my hands, as I knew there was no way to win this fight. But somebody had to try to keep ‘em back while the younger, faster wolves ran to tell the ones behind us what was going on.

It was a stupid plan.

My namesake whistled and sang, taking arms, legs and even heads from the fuckers. The smell of gore was everywhere and yelps and howls filled the air from both sides. I passed judgment that night, lots of it. The ones I couldn’t kill won’t forget me for a while. But no matter how mad I was, the few was not going to beat the many.

I felt something slip past my guard, I never actually saw it, but it was broad, flat, and smelled like a charnel house. It went into my guts and ripped away some things that I knew were not spare parts. I lost it at that point. I felt something rip deep inside and I gave in to the rage.

I love and hate the Gauru form. The sense of freedom, the rage, the strength, its feels so good, like a coiled spring suddenly releasing. But with it comes the rage, the hunger, and madness. Friends and enemies all look alike, and everything smells like prey. Anybody who’s sane knows better, but Gauru are not sane.

I have no idea what happened next. There was no pain, no thought, just a need to tear and kill. The world was red haze, filled with things that needed to die. I was no longer a judge, just an executioner.  Nice gift Luna, next time you feel like giving presents you can just kiss my fuzzy ass!

In the end it was my pack totem that saved me. Cold-Fury-of-Justice was a rage spirit who kept me stoked way longer than I could have on my own. I got separated from the main fray and finally came to all alone and covered in gore. A lot of it was my own. God I was tired. My throat burned and I was covered in claw and teeth marks. It would have been so easy to just lay down and rest. But I was worried about the others. There was no way a bunch of bone-in-the-nose crescent moons was going to meet up with the whole fucking pure nation and not have it end badly. I had to make sure they were warned. I had to run.

I should have just laid the fuck down and took a nap.

So I changed again and took off. It hurt to run, my paws felt like everything they touched were made of glass. I was mending, but it was taking a long time. But uratha can run on just guts and will. I still had most of my guts and be damned if I was going to let anything stop me.

I saw it happen when I reached the top of a big hill, not far from the outskirts of the city. From there I could see a lot. In the distance I saw the lights of downtown. There was a highway, not more than a farm road really. Then I saw a bedraggled pack racing for their lives for Nashville. Connie Shred Lots, a rahu alpha from south Nashville, led them. Not far behind them was a wave of Pures. Their mocking howls echoed and the bile rose up in my throat.

Then from the other direction, I saw another mass of wolves racing towards them from Nashville. I couldn’t scent them from so far away but then I saw a flash of mottled fur that could only be little Matty, one of the new Changed from the Vandy pack. I had no idea what he was doing running with the others, but right now they were the only help.

In my relief I fell back on my haunches. I knew that they still could not break the Pure’s attack, but at least now they had the numbers to make an organized retreat, and the shaman for sure could raise some spookys to keep them off our trail long enough to escape.

Some of the ‘rescuers’ were limping as they ran. Their howls were not about the coming battle, but were urging everyone to run for their lives. Something happened to the ones who stayed behind to watch our backs. Whatever it was, it scared the crap out of our best summoners, and that takes some doing.

Then shit got really bad.

Shred’s bunch were not interested in running back into the jaws of the ones who just gave them a royal ass-kicking. They just poured on the speed, making for the city. The wind began to pick up as they ran, and the skies began to get ugly. Something was definitely stirring. Thunder crackled and the very sky itself shouted in a thunderous voice, “STAY BACK!” Then the wind blew even harder, the force of it pushing the one running into the city back, and those fleeing Nashville, forward. All of them tumbled like rag dolls, right into the waiting claws of the Pure.

Some of them got past whatever son of a bitch spooky that kicked up the hurricane. The last I saw was their total route as they tried to find a place in Nashville to hide.

I was too far to get to them right away. I stood up; ready to make one last charge, when I heard a new noise, a snarl of hate, and this one was much closer. I got a glimpse of it just a second before it hit me like a freight train. The thing was massive, way bigger than any Gauru I’d ever seen. It was definitely wolf-like, if you consider something almost 14 feet tall with a mouth big enough to swallow a footlocker, a wolf. I remember hearing stories about Predator Kings being able to turn into something that made Gauru look like Dalu. Crap. Those teeth were goddamn sharp, and its jaws were like a vice! I’m so glad to see that it wasn’t just a fairy tale, now my life is so fuckin complete. The bastard

It bit into my torso as it slammed into me full tilt. Lots of stuff inside me started sloshing and cracking. It hurt, a lot. The giant pure then flung me so hard that my feet left the ground for a long time. I remember tumbling through the air for a while, then the ground rushed up quick to smash into me. I rolled and eventually fell into a creek. After that my number one concern was to get air into my lungs. The Pure must have smelled the carnage from the battle and ran down to join in, because I never saw the fucker again.

When the sun finally rose, I found that Fury had saved my ass again, dragging me from the water and to a nearby train station. He said that he could not find any other uratha at all, Pure or Moon tribe. The spirits of Nashville were all riled up, he said that there was something nasty living in Nashville now. Whatever it is, the fucker seems to eat werewolves. It apparently ate most of those we left behind, and whatever Pures that went into the city did not come back out. He also said that I was the only member of my pack left alive, he felt the others die throughout the night. Crap.

Right now I’m stuffed in a shitty boxcar that not even a hobo would piss in. I found a pen and something like paper in a pile of trash. Damn! I can’t really feel my legs anymore, and the only thing holding my guts in is my hand. I don’t have any fucked up idea that I’m going to live through this, so I’m putting down all of the shit I can remember and telling Fury to give this to as many Moon Tribes as he can find nearby. I know he is about out of juice too. With the all of us dead or dying he’s barely more than a shadow now.

Can’t sit up anymore, don’t think I can write. If anybody gets this, just know it was a good plan. We shouldda won. Don’t let them forget about all of us. Don’t let the tribes think we died in our beds. We dealt justice…..(the rest is illegible as the writing seems to merge with the blood at the bottom of the page).