The Dark Pack Revealed

When they arrive in Tara, Rey sells the story of Ambrose's quest hard. He also plays up Jared's duel. Ambrose asks Faris how he knows so much, and learns about the relationship of sidhe and time.

At the caern the day after the moot, Sonya sits down with Dances for the Spirits and grills him on his personal information and skills. "You can tell she's a law dog," Aila comments cheerily.

Ambrose visits his double, who's just hanging out around the castle. Rey takes the opportunity to do more digging into his sword's history. People seem to know more about it than they're telling. One suggests that it's either Fiona or Gwydion.

Sonya sets Dances for the Spirits to researching the Texas town where everyone vanished. There are a lot of ghost stories from that area. Aila follows up on that lead, and discovers that this is the third time in history that this has happened: 200 years ago and 400 years ago, the whole town's population vanished. RF gets a map and shows it to a Uktena Theurge, who says there are no Great Banes in that area. Vampires? Nephandi? He doesn't know about those.

They try their Project Twilight contacts, who register almost constant hauntings there: no particular folklore revolving around it, but a 30% higher murder rate than average.

As for the Black Spiral pack, they have few ways to follow that lead. Spirits know the warehouse they held Jungle's Fury in, but the pack is gone. Still, they can check it out.

Ambrose calls when he gets home. They have him search on the Spiral pack. He finds one Edward Simpson, an MIT grad at age 13--child prodigy--born in Boston, vanished at age 15 and a half. He was a whiz at accounting, and gifted at computer programming. He was listed as a potential recruit by the Technocracy. Sonya follows that up with the Glass Walkers. Did they recruit him first? But no, they never picked him up.

At the warehouse, the pack finds a hologram. It activates with an image of Simpson, who tells them to hold their breath. "Silver," Sonya snarls without needing to check. They shift into their breed forms. Other chemicals start pumping into the air--an air-fuel bomb. They step sideways. The Balam freaks; Jonas kicks her. Aila drags the Balam into the Shadowlands with Jonas, while the rest of the pack stepping into the Umbra come face to face with a Nexus Crawler. Sonya exorcises it. They all regroup outside.

Then they either dodge or step sideways again as the warehouse explodes. People in the Umbra spot some kind of powdered Wyrm-dust--corrupted bee spirits! Dances for the Spirits uses Call the Wind Gift to corral them. Sonya calls Ambrose, who shows up with his spirit vacuum and demonstrates his newly-perfected ability to "enter etherspace" (for which he cops a bit of Paradox, oops). He sucks up the corrupted bee spirits, and scans the wreckage of the warehouse a bit before Sonya ushers them all out. Jonas plays official for the cops to distract them, but they need to clear out before that very thin facade falls through.