The gathering space for the Lupo Congregation was set a ways off the main compound, and was really nothing more than a large open space with a large stage set in the center. Stone-ringed fire pits dotted the landscape around the wooden structure like black heads in the damp, yellowing grass.

“This is where we perform our devotional every evening,” Sister Veronica sing-songed beside me as I took it all in.

It was just she and I wandering around this place now, with the two sisters having gone back to Eve’s room in the big house. Eve had played all the commotion at lunch off, saying that she was just helping Elise to come to terms with her devotion to the group. Really, they were packing and talking. The three of us were going to leave as soon as we could.

That was always the tricky part of robbing a place. You had to be prepared to make a quick and clean getaway.

I still couldn’t believe I was even considering doing this—robbing a cult to get the drugs they kept stashed away in their secret little building, and using those drugs to pay off the Denver Mafia. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.

“We’re only going to take enough to pay Trigger off,” Elise had pleaded as we stood there in the little storage building, her skin tinged yellow from the naked light bulb hanging over our heads like a sword of doom. “Do you really want to get stuck on the road with both me and Eve? Where would we go anyways, Jake? Thailand?”

“Actually, I kind of like a good Mai Thai. You and Eve could work on your tans, and I could just sit on the beach, maybe prop up a bar somewhere.”

“Look,” Eve had chimed in, “they’re not even going to miss it. All we’d have to do is rough up a few people after tonight’s gathering, then take off with it. You’re a tough looking guy, Jake, you can handle them.”

She was right, I could probably handle them. But that wasn’t what I disliked the idea of. I was committing a series of crimes just so I could pay back one of the biggest criminals I’d ever met.

Definitely not what I’d had planned when I started this crazy adventure.

So here I was, killing time with Sister Veronica since I wasn’t allowed inside Fenris’ home. I kicked a stray rock at one of the fire pits. “Evening devotionals, huh?” I asked as the rock rolled smooth and true over the foot-trampled ground and settled against a ring of its siblings. “Devotion to what?”

“To the Great Alpha, of course. We gather to bring our positive emotions together, to compound them, and to release our negative energies, break free of the temporal shackles that bind us to this earth and plane of existence.”

“Oh. Figured you were talking about watching the big game or something.”

Sister Veronica didn’t smile. Quite the opposite, actually.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Bad joke. What are these devotionals like?”

“Singing, chanting, interpretive dance. We retell the story of how Reverend Fenris was saved by the Great Alpha, send our prayers into the ether that he may return someday soon to save us all, to carry us to the Happy Hunting Grounds.”

Jesus, this just got crazier the more I learned about it. “Happy Hunting Grounds?”

“Where the game is plentiful, where the hunt is never over. Where we can inhabit our wolf bodies, and can run over the fields and through the forests.”

“Right.”

I peered up at the stage as we stopped at its base. It stood off the ground at about head height. Anyone who was on top of it would definitely be seen by everyone in attendance.

“Everyone has to attend these things? Every night?”

“Not everyone, but most. Our people who secure the community rotate on the responsibility, so they miss one every so often. But protection of the pack is a great responsibility, and they understand this.”

As she spoke, the hamster wheel in my mind began to creak and turn. I couldn’t believe it, but I was actually planning the heist even as she spoke. If we hit it during the devotional meeting, rather than after, we’d be able to get away scot-free. The only real problem I could see was in them figuring out who’d busted up the place so quickly.

“Must be quite the show,” I said.

“Oh, it’s no show. It’s very, very serious. We bring signs of all our worldly trappings, the things and objects that have held us back in life both mentally and spiritually, and we place them as an offering for the Great Alpha. He needs to see that we’re truthful and forthright in our devotion to him, Brother Jake.”

I nodded. “Right.”

I still couldn’t believe I was considering this. These people might be delusional, but they seemed nice. I really didn’t want to hurt any of them, even the guards who had to skip out on their religious rites to watch the drug house.

Unfortunately, though, I didn’t see another way out of this thing, other than running.