The Five Evolution

『"The fuck is that?"』

"So we pay the bikers a visit." Ethan looked at the map. "Now we don’t know the pack’s size or strength, so we come prepared." He grinned. "Let’s go see what Caroline’s packing."

The rain had weakened to a drizzle by the time they stepped into the parking lot. The blue van sat beneath a flickering streetlight.

Ethan walked around to the side and pressed a button on his keys, unlocking something in the process.

Mechanical clicking sounded. Then the side panel unfolded outward, revealing neatly organized rows of weapons beneath recessed white lights.

Among these weapons were tools designed for lycanthropes or any creature with an aversion to silver.

Raj’s eyes widened. "Oh, now we’re talking." He immediately grabbed the largest thing available. A silver-tipped axe.

The blade was nearly as wide as his torso. He swung it experimentally and the weapon whistled through the air. Raj’s grin widened. "Perfect."

Naomi smirked. "Compensating for something?"

Raj rested it across his shoulder. "For being too awesome? You can say that."

Naomi stepped forward and selected a balanced silver-tipped spear instead, testing its weight with an experienced spin.

From the look in her eyes, Amara figured she was probably imagining scenarios of skewering multiple bodies at once.

Sophia reached into the compartment next. Her hand hovered over several options before selecting a small silver knife.

The blade immediately glowed yellow and floated above her palm, spinning lazily. She grinned. "Nice."

Andre glanced into the compartment, then shook his head. "I’m good."

Amara folded her arms beneath her chest. "Same."

"Alright then." Ethan closed the compartment and moved toward the driver’s seat. "Let’s go pay some bikers a visit."

They all got into the van and drove off, headed for the east side of the woods, toward the location of the old auto shop as per the guidance of the bearded old man Raj questioned.

Once they arrived by the treeline, Ethan parked the van, and they continued on foot.

They walked past the signs warning tourists not to continue, and ahead, motorcycles were parked everywhere. Amara could hear the crackling and pop of a campfire.

When they pushed through the main door of the old autoshop, twelve werewolves looked back at them, and the atmosphere immediately turned hostile.

With seven Awakeners suddenly arriving in enemy territory, it was bound to be.

"Who makes a campfire indoors?" Hiro observed.

One large man stood up and stepped forward. "You’re a long way from home, Awakener."

Raj immediately rested his axe on one shoulder. "My... what big ears you have," he said with a grin plastered on his face.

The biker’s eye twitched, and before Amara wrapped her head around the short conversation, things escalated from there.

To her right, a large man was floated into the air, surrounded by golden-yellow, then flung across the room. His body slammed into a trailer outside, and his frame was imbedded into the metal.

To her left, one of them was immediately encased in ice, from his feet, all the way to his neck.

The bikers began to transform. Their claws popped out and their eyes changed color, glowing bright yellow.

"We just came to get answers—" Amara weaved past a claw that came for her face. "—about the—" she ducked past another swing. "—killings in town!"

A claw raked across her shoulder, and Amara heard the sound of fabric tear with a sharp rip.

She glanced down briefly at her jacket, which now hung open from where the claws had cut through it. "...I liked this jacket."

She stepped forward, and the werewolf barely had time to register the movement before her fist crashed into his face, sending him sailing through the garage door.

"Fuck, yeah!" Raj was already bulldozing through two of them.

He approached a female next. She had short wavy hair, and her eyes were different from the rest, glowing blood red.

When Raj swung, she caught the axe by the silver-coated shaft and delivered a front kick that sent him flying into a bike. Then she looked at her palm which sizzled, slightly burnt.

Across the autoshop, Naomi’s spear crackled, surrounded by lightning. She was about to run it through one of them when the Alpha shifted her attention to her and shouted. "Wait!"

Everyone suddenly paused what they were doing. Ethan was mid-wrapping one of the transformed bikers with chains he found by their bikes.

Hiro was seated on the ground, rusted pipe in hand, while a fully transformed werewolf held an old automobile above his head, about to drop it on him.

"Wait," the Alpha repeated.

The red in her eyes vanished, returning to brown, and the burned skin on her palm faded before their eyes. She looked at all seven of them and said, "we didn’t kill anyone."

"The timeline of your arrival doesn’t really help that argument," Naomi said, still holding a spear over the biker.

"Our friend went missing weeks before anyone else did." Her voice was level. "You think we’d stay in a town where something took one of ours?"

She looked around at her pack, then back. "We stayed because whatever did this is still here. And we want it dead."

The atmosphere in the room shifted. Raj looked at his axe, then at the Alpha. "So we picked a fight with the wrong people?"

"Seems like it," Andre said.

He looked at his axe again and turned to Amara. "Oh, man..."

"Look. We don’t want trouble." She folded her arms. "Every full moon, people started dying." Her expression hardened. "And I’m sure everybody blamed us."

Sophia exchanged a glance with Ethan. The timeline matched.

"I suggest you leave town," Ethan told the pack. "Tonight. We’ll handle whatever this is."

She walked over to Ethan and Amara’s grip reflexively tightened across the hilt of her blade.

"Whatever is out there? That thing took one of ours." She poked at Ethan’s chest. "We want retribution."

Ethan looked down at her finger the moment it made contact with his chest, then returned his gaze to her eyes. "I guess it’s my fault for using the word ’suggest’."

Across the room, other werewolves growled as their stances shifted.

The Alpha looked at him for a long moment. Then she nodded once and lifted an arm, calming her pack. "You fucking Awakeners..."

She turned away from them, and her pack followed, which was probably as close to an agreement as they were going to get.

Raj being Raj decided to escort them out for whatever strange reason Amara wasn’t interested in knowing.

***

With the misunderstanding behind them, the group made their way back through the woods toward the van. Darkness had settled fully now, and the forest seemed far less welcoming than it had an hour ago.

"You think something or someone’s trying to frame them?" Hiro asked.

Ethan kept walking without slowing when he responded, "it’s a possibility."

Amara, meanwhile, reached into her jacket pocket and retrieved the locket. As she held it, her thumb brushed across the metal absentmindedly.

Raj noticed immediately. "You carrying that thing around now?"

She glanced up. "What thing?"

Raj pointed. "The necklace."

"It’s a locket," Amara corrected.

Raj shrugged. "Same thing."

A faint smile tugged at Amara’s lips as she opened it. Using the flashlight on her phone, she illuminated the photograph inside.

Raj squinted at it in the low light. "Huh." He leaned closer. "Now that I look at it again, she looks sort of familiar."

He waved over Naomi. "Hey, Naomi."

"What now?" she asked, falling into step beside them.

Raj pointed at the image. "Does she look familiar to you?"

Naomi’s eyes twitched as she looked at it. "Why the fuck would she—" Her eyes stopped on the star-shaped birthmark on the back of the little girl’s hand. "Wait."

Amara’s eyebrow went up. "What is it?"

Naomi looked up. "She’s the old woman..."

"What old woman?" Amara asked.

Naomi sighed. "The one we interviewed? Try to keep up."

"You mean Mabel?" Raj asked.

Before Naomi could respond—likely with another rude comment—the ground shook.

Roots erupted from beneath the surface in a rapid surge as thick cables of wood wrapped around Hiro’s ankle and pulled downward hard.

Hiro went down with a yell, fingers scrabbling at the soil as the roots dragged him toward the earth.

Ethan, who was closest, grabbed both his arms, planting his feet. Andre grabbed Ethan’s shoulder and pulled. The roots strained for a moment, then released.

Hiro came free, gasping. He scrambled upright and put three feet between himself and the hole that had opened in the ground, staring at it.

"Okay," he said, breathing hard. "Okay okay okay. The woods just tried to eat me."

Sophia rushed over. "You okay?"

"No."

Immediately, another set of vines burst from the ground, roots erupting everywhere as the forest came alive.

Amara’s eyes ignited blue and the dark woods sharpened with clarity. She could see the heat and energy signatures of the group around her, the cold mass of the trees, the soil, the roots.

And with three precise cuts from Angel’s Bane that flashed through the darkness, every animated vine that came near them were immediately severed.

"What the hell?" Hiro’s chest heaved as he tried desperately to control his breathing. "What the hell was that?!"

"No idea," Amara said as she scanned the darkness between the trunks, and for a moment, she could have sworn she saw something.

White flames ran up the blade, throwing clean light in every direction, and the shadows pulled back twenty feet as the woods lit up.

"You’re getting better at that," Ethan said quietly.

"This is basically all I can deliberately do with it," she said, moving the blade slowly, sweeping the light across the tree line.

There. At the edge of the light’s reach. An upright figure moved between the trees.

This creature had the shape of your typical werewolf, but it was larger, and had fungi growing all over its body.

"There," Sophia said, already pointing.

"The fuck is that?" Raj asked.

Sophia blew on her disheveled hair. "That is definitely not in any of the Machine’s handbooks."

"It’s no werewolf, that’s for sure. Or maybe it’s a different breed, I’m new to this," Hiro said as they moved toward it as one.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!