I shoulda eaten one of those damn sandwiches, Rory felt the wolf's stomach gripe at the mention of food. There'd been such a bustle for the Wargs to ship out and hunt down their kin that Rory only caught a passing glance at the food that Sameera had offered. He hadn't thought much of it at the time and now he could think of little else. Human hungers were easy enough to suppress and shunt to the side until they could be properly dealt with, but a hungry wolf... a hungry wolf wasn't always rational and Rory hadn't yet consumed the half dozen pounds of twitching, bleeding protein it required. The hunger didn't particularly hamper his current task, oh no, if anything his sense of smell was all the keener. The problem, was that most of the scent trails he'd picked up smelled absolutely delicious. So many of the wargs they hunted were small, frightened, domesticated things, all thick with the stink of prey, and the humans! Well.... Eating sentient creatures was generally frowned upon by most modern wargs, and the Red Pack were quite modern in many respects. Still... some winters were longer and harder than others, exceptions were made, and the hungry wolf remembered the pangs of the long winter.
The wolf padded along, keeping to the shadows and alleys as it completed another circuit. Stealth was key here, Rory wouldn't pass for dog and the folk about these parts of Old Town seemed to shock easily enough. The world of scents was lively enough though. The sense of smell in a wolf or a dog was a far cry from the mild things humans made due with. A wolf didn't just smell or taste a scent, he could see it, feel it, and all the world was full of the fading ghosts of people and things. Warg scent was nothing too difficult for the wolf to pick out, a blend of human and beast distinct enough to be separate from the lone sums of its parts. They were on the move, a great many of them. The wolf followed, silent, a flicker in growing gloom, hunting. The scent of small wargs grew thicker, and Rory could hear them, the pitter patter of little delicious paws. He shook his head and focused, picking up speed. He reached a clearing in the dark, empty save for the ghosts of a myriad smells, and a door. He pawed back and forth, sniffing the door's lining, a part of him far more antsy than it had any right to be, the part of him that found doors and paws incompatible. Rory sat back on his haunches and resisted the urge to howl. The nose knew, knew that at least one of his comrades was close, the big one, Jason. He was still on the clock, he was still a Praetorian, and Praetorians waited for back up. Come to think of it, Praetorians probably didn't eat key suspects. Something like a grin turned the corners of the wolf's mouth, a profoundly human expression for a lupine face to manage. Rory wondered how far his superiors would go in the name of 'cultural diversity.'
