CHAPTER Volunteer

Almost four hours later, Jon called Beta Saul Bastille on a satellite phone from the Westcliff and announced, "Tell Monarch Vanguard we found the planes. We found ground zero and I got samples of the Project Elm Street weapon."

"We need to hurry and get this solved. We need a cure, Lance. They are planning on coming to Colorado and killing all the Ravers," Saul revealed quietly.

They had desperately sought an answer for months, but Jon knew they were running out of time, so he said, "Tell Nicolea to come to Westcliff, and tell your cousin we are working on an antidote. Jake needs to buy us some time with the other governments."

"I'll do that. We'll try. See you soon." Saul hung up without saying goodbye.

Less than ten minutes later, Dr. Nicolea Trinity rushed into the hanger turned research center. "What did you find?"

"How did you get here so fast?" Bethany demanded in shock.

Rolling her eyes at the Vampiress, Nicolea snapped, "It's a Fae thing. What did you find?"

Shaking his head, Jon gave her and Bethany all the bad news. "We found Dr. Strawford shot in the head and a tanker filled with a sticky organic residue. I brought back samples, but we might have a bigger problem. After telling me it was the cooked sap and pollen of a kind of elm tree, Merle told me his half-sister is trying to start another war like she did in the dark ages when half the population of the world died. She's planning on using the Dust of Rage again and because it is completely organic, we might not be able to detect it."

Nicolea scowled, revealing, "I have never heard of a Samhain Elm or this Dust of Rage stuff. Is he sure?"

Jon leveled her with a look, until she glanced away, then he explained, "If it is an organic compound, that may be why the initial investigators didn't pick up on it. Greyson told me, in the war in the dark ages, they burned the forest of Ireland to get rid of it. He also said his sister must have saved one. Her name is Morgana. I didn't even know he had a sister," Jon admitted, feeling slightly hurt by the omission.

"She's Gerard and Galen's mother," Nicolea said quietly, "I have never met her, but Bianca said she is the most evil creature to ever live. She killed Galen's sealed one to curse him and bless Gerard."

"What is a sealed one?" Bethany asked.

"It is the Fae equivalent of a mate or beloved. Fae use soul magic, live it, breathe it, feed off it, and are bound by it. To kill a fae's sealed one is the worst thing you can do to them," Jon answered quietly. "Come on, let's get to work. We need to figure out what exactly this stuff is before we can figure out who to make an antidote."

"Or if there is one," Nic added quietly in resignation.

"Greyson told you to have hope," Jon reminded.

The beautiful young Fae bowed her head. "I'm trying."

Jon awoke from a nap at the sound of a jet flying over and turning to make its approach. Looking at the clock, he groaned as he stretched on the uncomfortable couch, thinking, An hour is better than no sleep at all.

Saul had arrived. Nicholea was still bent over a computer with Bethany at the adjacent desk. The residue was completely organic with a molecular structure not very different from maple syrup, just like Merle told me, but there were a few branches on the molecule that were salts of some kind, a compound none of us had seen before.

Bethany brought me over a cup of coffee. "We still don't know what the weird salts on the outside of the molecule are."

"I think we need a pharmacodynamics specialist or research pharmacologist," Nic announced as she stood, then tipped her head and snorted, "Hmph, the monarch came with him."

"Really?" Bethany looked surprised as she yawned. It was long past her usual morning bedtime.

Instead of answering, Nicolea went to the door. "Monarch Vanguard, we weren't expecting you."

Jake, his brother Will, and cousin Saul walked in. Jake looked tired and Jon immediately noticed a flash of silver below his collar under his shirt.

"Hello, Jake, Will, Saul," Jon greeted them.

"Good to see you, Dr. Lance. Did you find it?" Jake asked straight away. "Do you really think you can make an antidote?"

Nic and Saul glanced at each other as Jon shrugged, and answered evasively, "We can only hope the limbic system damage isn't permanent and we can figure it out. It will take time."

"Tell me everything you found. Were the planes there?"

"We did not find the planes, but we did find Dr. Keith Strawford of the Human Purity Project murdered in a hanger near a partially burned tanker truck filled with residue of the Elm Street Chemical Weapon..." The new monarch was a general, so Jno gave him the details, all the fact with no guesses or theories. "Then Bethany and I escaped while Dr. Greyson and the Vampires lured in a different direction. We arrived here four hours later, called Saul and began working on the analysis."

"So, Greyson is an Ascended Angelus? Is he strong enough to help us against the high Demonus that is after J.J.?" Will demanded.

But Jake held up his hand, interrupting, "One thing at a time, little brother. Lance, if this special sap is really the raw material used to make the Dust of Rage stuff, how could they get enough from just one tree or even a few trees? They would need a forest of them to make enough to cover the state like they did. Can it be synthesized somehow?"

"I don't know. I won't know until we run some test on it. We are running it through the equipment you sent but..." Jon hesitated to ask.

"But what?" Jake demanded.

Nic saved me by answering, "But we also need to test it on someone. Preferably someone who already has control of their Raver."

"No!" Jake growled at the same moment Will said, "I'll do it."

While they argued, Jon thought about was African Violets and how they had been smuggled out of South Africa and cloned then about Johnny Appleseed.

When they stopped, Jon interrupted, "Monarch, there are a lot of ways they could create hundreds, even thousands of trees. They could be clones, or rooted shoots, or grafted branches. Willow trees can be propagated with just a branch and a bucket of water. Apple trees are almost always grafted into a started root ball and trunk. Any of those methods might work to create many trees from just one. It doesn't matter how they were made. Merle compared the substance we found to maple syrup."

"Hopefully, the sap and pollen can only be harvested once a year and at different times of the year," Bethany added, "And if this is some kind of extinct Irish Elm, then we need to look into areas with that climate is like Ireland and hope to find them."

"But we don't even know what they look or smell like." Saul growled. "We won't have much time before they start making more, if they aren't working on it already."

The Monarchy wolves looked to Jon for a moment, before Bethany added, "If it can be made synthetically, we're screwed, that means they can make it anytime and anywhere, without waiting to harvest it. That's part of the reason the drug cartels began switching from organics like cannabis, cocaine, and opium to meth, crack, and fentanyl, no growing season.

"Then we need to pray it isn't," Jon reminded, then repeated, "But we still need a pharmacologist to test it, and Nic still needs to test it on someone's Raver."

They could see Will and Jake still having an internal battle because both were unusually still as they stared at one another, then Jake just turned and stormed out, slamming the door. He was obviously upset.

Saul sighed, then scolded Will, "He doesn't want to lose you."

Bravely, Will stood up to his older cousin, the way he stood up to his brother. "He won't. Nic will get me back, just like Shalom got the Monarch Mountain Ravers back."

His confidence in the Fae doctor would be reassuring if they knew what effect it was going to have on him. Jon didn't want Will to be stuck like many of the Ravers had been, because they knew the milder exposure Jake and Will suffered on the Revelation Night had spared them. Re-exposure would be dangerous, but all had to admire his bravery.

"Will, if you do this, you might be stuck as your Raver permanently," Jon warned.

The young werewolf closed his eyes, and Jon knew he was thinking about his dead mate Molly, Shalom's daughter. When he opened his eyes again, they held a look of resigned determination. "If a cure can be found, I want to help find it. If we know exactly what it does to a male werewolf, then maybe we can stop it when they try it again."

Saul growled but then calmed himself when Nicolea put her hand on his arm before turning to Will. She announced calmly, "I can have everything ready for a test exposure in a controlled environment in a week."
"Next week it is then," Will agreed in a cavalier tone, then he looked at the door. "I'm gonna go talk to Jake. Don't worry, Saul. I'll be fine."

VvvvvV

Will was in his fur and lying very still, cringing at the loud noise of the MRI machine. His wolf was very unhappy about the enclosed space and loud clanging.

Having electrodes stuck all over our body, my wolf and Raver can handle, but this? He worried as his wolf whimpered and Will promised him it would be over soon.

After two long days of testing on Will's skin, his wolf, and his Raver, Nicolea was going to monitor his actual shift between forms before and after exposure to the Elm, as she called it. They now knew the name Project Elm Street was more than a code name. The actual biochemical weapon was made from the sap and pollen of a type of elm tree.

"Okay, Will, can you shift to your Raver slowly?"

Will's wolf yipped affirmatively, and they slowly shifted. Everything started to tint red, but skin and fur sides fought it together. They had to stay in control. They had to do this successfully so the other Ravers could be cured. The researchers needed answers for all wolf kind, but for Will personally, he was doing it for Molly. There was barely room for his Raver in the tube. He was thirty percent bigger than his fighting form was before the Revelation Night with longer claws, stronger muscles, faster healing, and better senses. He even had bigger teeth.

His wolf flashed him an image from one of Julia's scrapbooks, a gray warform wolf in a granny nightgown and cap and the caption, My, my, Granny, what big teeth you have.

His Raver rumbled a laugh that echoed inside the tube as Will remembered that Halloween years ago, when Jen and Jes both wanted to be Little Red Riding Hood and needed a wolfy grandmother. They had spent an hour putting make-up on his warform and he walked through the streets of the pack wearing a long pink flowered housecoat and matching shower bonnet. As a teenager, Will had been teased for years but it was worth every moment to see their shining green eyes. They both looked so much like Richard's sisters except they had Julia's honey blonde hair.

Last year, they were going to be Ruby and Yang, he was going to let them paint his wolf black and white so he looked like a Grimm wolf from the RWBY series. Sadness started to creep in, and redness tinted his vision more. Will's nieces were the most precious thing in his world because he didn't have his mate then. He let go of the pain and focused on something else, something funny, he knew he couldn't have a breakdown in his Raver form. He imagined the incredible Hulk as a green Raver and his wolf snickered. Images of their raver jumping into pools of goo, or painting itself with a brush, or in a giant washing machine of colored water going around and around like when Julia had to dye Jake's underwear. Will imagined his wolf coming out of the dryer all fluffy like a poodle and his wolf huffed in amused disgust, retorting with an image of Wil's skin with a blonde afro.

"Can you shift all the way back now?" Nicolea's voice sounded strange as she spoke into the tube.

His Raver shrank into his wolf and then to his skin. He still had not managed to shift from Raver straight to skin even though he could shift from either wolf or skin to his Raver. He waited as the bed slid out of the MRI tube. Nic was holding a nebulizer. He opened his mouth to ask, but she held up her hand. "Are you ready for the not fun part to start?"

Breathing in and out slowly, Will nodded.

"You don't have to do this, Will," Saul insisted, speaking the words Jake was thinking.

The youngest Van Guard looked past his cousin at his older brother with intensely determined eyes, and announced, "Yes, I do. I don't have a mate and a son to find. Molly is waiting for me if I don't make it. I love you both." He took the nebulizer apparatus from the Fae and inhaled deeply three times, then he laid down and slid back into the MRI tube.

VvvvvV

Jake VanGuard's POV...

As I watched Will gulped a lungful of contaminated mist and could almost taste the sweetness. My tongue felt thick in my mouth, and I couldn't swallow. Turning away, I took Saul by the arm and led him out of the room. We had moved all the equipment into the prison hospital and were ready to seal Will in if he lost control of his Raver.

"You need to go."

"No," Saul refused, pulling his arm from my grasp. "He won't hurt me."

"You don't know that. You weren't with us that night," I snarled at him. I could see the red tint creeping into the edge of my vision, and I breathed slowly out to calm myself. "Look Saul, if his Raver goes feral, it won't stop hunting you until you are dead. Shalom isn't here to save you."

"She wouldn't shoot Will, she told him she wants him to live a long life with his grief like he is." Saul chewed his cigar.

"Do you ever actually smoke those?" I asked.

"Only after sex," he snarked back. "I'll be outside with a rifle if he makes it passed you."

"He won't... Saul, please go... I... I need you to find Shalom. If anyone can, you can. You did it before." I needed to know my mate and son were safe. The not-knowing was worse than after the Revelation Night, worse than after I learned she was alive and what I had done to her.

"She found..."

A Raver's snarl and howling growl echoed down the hall, followed by the sounds of arcing electricity and breaking things.

"Lock us in and go!" I ordered Saul then I turned and sprinted back through the doors, slamming them behind me.

I tried to ignore the clank of the locks as I hurried toward my brother. A Fae Demonus shrieked ahead of me, and I ran harder. I stopped at the last door. I was locked out. I shook the handle harder as the world tinted red. Peeking through the tiny window I couldn't see them, only the destruction of their warring monsters. My Raver emerged ready to rip the door off its hinges. I could hear the muffled sounds of beasts battling then it became oddly quiet. The heavy iron wouldn't budge so I kicked in the observation room door.

My Raver would barely fit through the opening, but we froze at what we saw. I blinked against the red-tinted vision of my Raver and let myself melt back into my human body. Will's Raver was lying on the floor with its head in Nicholea's Demonus' lap. She was running long dagger-nails over his head and murmuring to him. I couldn't hear them, but I could see why the term succubus applied to the females of the Dark Fae species. Nicolea was somehow more beautiful with larger eyes, and fuller lips and hair. Her olive skin tone seemed darker, more like matte copper. Her dark hair blended with her black feathered wings. I put my hand on the circles of fractures. She glanced at me through the impact-cracked glass and inclined her head that I should go. I sent the impression to Saul to unlock the doors after I shrank back into my human form. Picking up the clothes I shed while running down the halls, I dressed as I walked.

Saul was in the security room near the entrance. "It looks like Nic has it handled."

"I didn't know Demonus had black feathered wings, I thought they all had bat-like wings," I said looking at the monitor. The mic in the room was picking up her soothing words to Will's quietly growling Raver but it wasn't any language I had ever heard.

"Only Fallen Fae have leathery wings. Cursed Fae and Ascended Demonus have black feathers, Blessed Demonus and Ascended Angelus have golden white feathers," Saul explained.

"You seem to know a lot about the rarest species on our planet, Beta." Eyeing him as he shrugged, I waited for an explanation, but he gave none. I shook my head as he turned back to the monitors. We watched as Nic started putting EEG electrodes on Will's Raver to study the changes in his brain. It was going to be a long day and night. I sat down and prayed that she could get my baby brother back. Putting my feet on the desk and thought about what Nicolea revealed about Petra and as much as my Raver wanted to rip the Forever Blessed Demonus to shreds, I need to find a way to discern her thralls and allies before I broke my elder brother's heart.