YELLOW TAPE AND COFFEE

Four intertwining stories. Four points of view of a single large event. Four people from different backgrounds with different ideals.

And a secret society of werewolves is unveiled in Portland, Oregon.

For four hundred years, they have kept their secret. Some will do anything to reveal it. Others will sacrifice everything to keep it.

Alliances will be forged and shattered. Friendships will be made and betrayed as conflicting agendas clash across the city and by the end Portland, and the entire world, will never be the same.

Veer knew she wouldn’t get much but hoped for at least something. Five years of working the crime beat in Portland, off and on. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, but it paid the bills and allowed her to work on the big stories, the deep-dive exposés that were the real reason she’d gone into journalism in the first place. And now that she was sitting on the biggest one yet, for almost three years, it seemed all she could do was sit. These attacks, though, if her guess about them was correct, might be exactly what she was waiting for.
Grant fell onto the street, splashing down into a puddle, barely catching himself with both hands. Headlights appeared out of the rain and a car swerved around him with a loud honk but didn’t slow down. He was naked, lying on the road, and there was an excruciating pain in his side. He pulled himself painfully to his feet and stumbled to the side of the road. A young woman looked at him, shocked, asked him if he was okay, but turned and ran when he just growled an obscenity at her. He took several more steps, down the sidewalk. At the end of the block, a taxi was sitting alongside the road. Step by painful step he reached it. He opened the door and fell into the back seat. “Seventieth and Alberta,” he told the driver. “Hurry”
Toni didn’t laugh, though. “It’s the hour of the wolf,” she said. He didn’t understand. She must have sensed it, and explained, “It’s what my mom called it. The hour before the first light of dawn, when the stars are still shining bright. All the night creatures have gone to sleep and the day creatures are yet to stir. The hour when you lie awake overwhelmed by all the troubles in your life, all your bad decisions and missed opportunities. The should’ves and could’ves and the might-have-beens. She described it as being consumed by a beautiful sadness.”
He realized this figure couldn’t have been the source of the noise he’d heard. He swept his flashlight across the floor again and came to a stop when it hit Toni Briggs, huddled naked against the far wall. She had her knees pulled up against her chest as if she was trying to draw herself into as small a position as possible and disappear altogether. She looked up at him with an expression he couldn’t begin to parse.