A winter in Yetinburg ch.1

	"AWOOOOOOOO!"
	"And what are you howling about Eva?" I asked, smiling as I rubbed the small head of the white haired werewolf pup on my lap. The little wolf giggled and looked straight up to look at me, her tail patting the couch as she answered.
	"I'm tellin everyone I love ya!" She answered, getting a ruffled head for her honesty while she laughed.
	My beautiful wife Tava walked in behind me as I started tickling Eva, her black furred paw reaching down to rub Eva's head while smiling at the pair of us. I returned the smile as she sat down beside me again to enjoy the television movie that had come on to enjoy the quiet family moment.
	"Tava, was she really saying that?" I asked, letting Eva settle down in her spot. The mother wolf chuckled a bit and smiled over to me with an amused smile.
	"She needs to work on the pronounciation." She joked, the three of us stopping our talking to watch the movie in silence.

	"Sebastian. We're moving on." The distant, echoing voice came from all sides.

	No, I didn't want that. But what I wanted didn't change what was happening, the walls and surroundings shifted and changed around me without my permission. I had been placed in a chair sitting by a hospital bed, my wife laying there with life support tubes fed up her nose. Her cheeks were sunken in and her hair was thinned. Her once shiny black tail was molted and a shadow of it's former self, much like herself. It was a familiar scene, I knew it all too well. I was holding her weak, shaky paw as she forced a smile onto her emaciated face.
	"I don't think I'm going to make it through the night Sebastian..." She spoke with a weak, hoarse voice she struggled to get out.
	"No."
	"You need to mo-" She stopped to cough a painful, deep cough that left blood on her paw.
"You need to move on when I'm g-gone... Eva needs a mother figure when I'm gone. I don't mind."
	"No, stop it."
	"I don't mind, live happily once I'm gone."
	"STOP IT!" I screamed, standing up and looking out into the featureless walls of the room where shadows took their place. The scene dissolved around me, my body rousing me from it's unnatural sleep.

	I woke up back in the familiar office that I had seen over two hundred times before. I was resting on the same side-less couch as always, it's were-sheep wool insides almost taking me to sleep again before I sat my weary body up and turned away from the therapist in my mild anger. She must have sensed this, the old nightmare in her casual clothes sitting behind her desk with a
clipboard in hand.
	"I'm sorry Sebastion, I thought you were ready to try again. I know it's hard, but it's been almost four years since then." She stated with clinical objectiveness leaking out of her voice, and my only response is to look at the clock to see if the hour was up yet. "We can leave it here for today then, but you'll need to accept what happened eventually."
	I stand up without saying anything and leave the dimly lit room, the only bright light coming from the lamp on the nightmare's desk with the rest left purposely dim. The only reason I put up with this is so I can keep seeing my family. Or are least my memory of them. The home videos at home don't let me do that. For now, I step outside the building to head off to work.
	It's a short drive to the morgue. Nobody wanted to go to a clinical doctor with an apathetic attitude on life. I suppose I can't blame them, it's not like you'd be able to put in the right amount of effort into the task. A blue oni got me a job there, nights only. Always wearing a business suit, keeps herself trim and proper at all times. To be honest I don't do anything there unless some 'associates' come by looking for a late night cremation for someone cutting into their territory, or that couldn't pay their debts. I pinch the organs if they're fresh enough for my boss. There isn't a lot of regulations so far from other civilization, but a large city like Yetinburg still has the shady types. It gets me my drinks so I don't question it.
	I park a distance away from the morgue as I'm supposed to, I'm technically only a night guard employed to keep things safe there. Nothing ever happens though. And nobody ever sees my sorry self, the boss likes it that way. With my unkempt hair and shaggy beard I'm not a pretty sight, and the stench of alcohol doesn't wash out now. The exhausted face I have permanently probably doesn't help any either.
	Walking along the frozen sidewalk as the wind starts to pick up I noticed someone in an alleyway as you walk past it. A glance gives me a glimpse of blonde haired girl with a fluffy tail sitting huddled up in the snow-filled alleyway with a helping of white on her shivering form. She has full winter wear on but is still going to freeze like that. I let it pass while moving along, taking in no more details of the homeless woman. I'll probably see her tomorrow night, a blizzard is starting up. I'll be fine, I've lived here since I was a child. Truck could push through a drift three feet tall, maybe more.
	I get to my job and enter in the back like usual. I strip off my own jacket and let it hang by the heater to dry itself as I head to my usual spot in the makeshift monitoring room. All it has is a speaker that lets me talk with someone at the side door. The 'associates' are the only ones that come by there. There are no alarms, don't want the police sniffing about. I sit down and get comfortable in my chair, leaning back and taking the bottle out of the bag I had brought with me so I can forget about my thoughts for a while as I turn on the television to see what channels aren't knocked out by the impending storm. Only the local channel playing nonsense infomercials and some sort of movie channel playing a marathon of b-movies. I go with the movies, at least it'll be entertaining while drunk.
	The night goes by as per usual, nothing happening besides me drinking and being barely entertained by movies that could barely make it to television with how horrible their production costs were. The 'associates' wouldn't come by, they like to take the dismal winters off when it got as cold as it was. Until a noise caught my ear, a clattering from the autopsy room where the bodies were kept. Things didn't move on their own here, I knew that. First time I've had a break-in though, nobody has that much interest in dead bodies in Yetinburg. It's still my job to take care of it, as much as it makes me grumble and gripe. I stand up and head out of my office to check on things, hoping it's just an animal having gotten inside. All sorts of critters in the city with the forest surrounding it for miles. I open up the doorway and step inside to find the source of the clattering all too easily.
	The young woman I had seen before is there, puking up something thick and bloody onto the tiled floor she was kneeling on. There had been a body left on the table being embalmed overnight, and it seems she had cut something out. It looked like the liver, from the half of it next to the faintly blonde haired canine and the location of the hole in the body. The only indication to what she is are the pointed ears under her snow cap and the three shaggy tails coming out the back of her snow pants. She hadn't noticed me as she kept on puking up any of what had to be a liver drenched in embalming fluid, holding her pained stomach. I could hear her crying. Her hands were bloody, and each finger seemed to be ending in a sharp point where sharp claws similar to were-wolves were rooted at the fingertips. She seemed to be done with her vomiting, though her mouth and chin were soaked in the red stuff. She had to be a junkie, don't think anyone was idiotic enough to do something stupid like this. I don't even know how she got in. Not expecting a fight, I move on over to her surprise. Two predatory yellow eyes swing around with her alert ears and pin onto me, sunken cheeks and black bags under her eyes becoming much more visible.
	Before I can react she does instead, leaping up with agility that surprises me. A few panicked swings of her claws at my face later, I turn to try and get out so I can lock her in and let her come down from whatever trip she's having instead of getting who knows how many infected claw wounds. I can't even manage that before she's jumped on the counter next to the door before leaping at me, hands extended. Clawed fingers and strength ill-fitting her emaciated weight meet my neck, slamming me against the floor hard enough to daze me if it weren't for the crushing pressure on my jugular. I panic a moment as I choke in my own throat, looking up at my attacker as I struggle. How can a small woman like this handle someone a foot taller at six feet and much heavier than her like it was nothing?
	I manage to look at her face as this is happening. She's scared, crying, and desperate. I go limp, and lay back to accept my fate as my breathing becomes impossible. Before I black out it seems she changes her mind, or more realizes what she's doing. A gasp and she's let go, my body forcing breath back into me to gasp with pain. The girl takes off, though I can watch her running towards the room with the broken window she came in from. She wobbles and struggles to control her legs, almost not making it out the window and outside.
	I stay laying there with the sharp pain from the claws in my neck and the feeling that the trachea had been crushed, though since I was breathing that seemed unlikely. A shame, I think for a moment. It wouldn't be bad to die like that, it would have been quick at least. I almost lament it as I stand up and begin to plan out the report while I set out cleaning things up before my shift is over. The bloody mess on the ground gets cleaned up, the body gets stitched closed, and the window gets a board of cheap wood hammered over it to keep the snow out. I don't get to drink that much tonight due to this hassle, but at least I'll get to drink at home with my videos now.
	Once the report is done and placed on the boss's desk, I gather my things and head back out the back door of the morgue. There is no sign of the woman as I head through the foot deep snow back to my truck through the howling wind and icy snow that is blowing at my back. Her tracks are long gone thanks to the storm. It looks like I won't see her again with any luck. I reach my truck and get it
heated up while I clear the windshield of ice and snow before heading off on the empty road to get back home, the snow on the road slowing my drive to my house.
	The radio crackles and comes in spurts while on the somewhat long drive, talking about some sort of story about organ harvesters setting up shop in a large city a hundred miles south. Well, I'm no one to take the high ground on that. Taking another drink of the bottle, I notice something collapsed and being covered in snow to the side of the road ahead when it catches in my headlight. A natural curiosity comes up in the back of my head. It may be a neighbor. I slow down and park my truck next to them before circling around the front to get to the pile of fur, winter clothes, and blood.
	Blood? I push the snow off to find that same young woman, blank expression on her pale face as she lays dying there. She won't last much longer, she's practically dead already. That's what I tell myself while looking at her, but something stops me from just moving away. The molted, shaggy fur of her tails, the thinned hair on her head, the sunken cheeks. It all reminds me of-
	I take a drink to break my thoughts, tossing the empty bottle away. I can't leave her here, the sheriff will be investigating the blood and I can't let them find traces of embalming fluid in her stomach. With a frown and grumble, I pick up the poor thing and get the snow off before putting her into the back seat of the truck with my emergency blanket on top to try and preserve whatever heat her body still has. If she dies I can at least take her into the morgue for a date with the incinerator.
	The drive resumes with a tad more tension in my mind, I cannot help but look back to check to see if the woman had woken up. She weighed next to nothing, probably no more than skin and bones under those clothes but she had the strength to overpower me even in that state. Kitsune weren't supposed to be that strong, but nothing about her seemed like it was usual. All that business back at the morgue was way too odd for my liking, but it had to just be a bad trip she was having. Could explain the odd amount of strength. Maybe the boss knew who she was, or at least her 'associates' would.
	Finally, I reach my home and pull into the covered driveway to get inside as the storm keeps on blowing a biting wind. I carry the little woman inside the house, which is chilled to the bone without the fireplace going. I place her down on the couch before starting it up, getting a place set up close to it in a cot so I can start helping her recover.
	Wait, when did that thought come into my head? Is that why I brought her here? I'm rusty as old barbed wire as a doctor, but maybe I just took pity on her. Maybe I'm hoping she finishes what she starts when she wakes up. Whatever the case, I suppose I'm going to bring her back from the brink of death.
	The place is set up but I have to strip her down and give her a hot sponge bath to clean her up. Her body is rail thin and looks pathetic, ribs showing and all. Grew up before running short on food at the very least. Once she's clean I get her into her warm spot and get some water into her. I start cooking some chicken soup to nurse her with later, but in the meantime head back to inspect her more out of curiosity.
	The nails of her fingers are indeed claw-like, sharper and sturdier than a were-wolves even. Her canine teeth are just as long, though she is missing the bottom right canine and several other teeth due to her malnourishment. They're all razor sharp, making it tricky to inspect without getting nicked on them. When I try to move the tongue I find it can extend out of the mouth all the way past her chin in one long, thick, tubular, fleshy organ. Nothing else comes out as out of the ordinary though. After feeding the poor thing I retire to watch my videos, popping in one of my favorites. One of the videos I caught of Eva howling when she thought her parents were asleep early in the morning.
	But a nagging makes me pick up the laptop and start to look up the features of this odd woman. She couldn't be older than twenty two, though that estimate wasn't necessary. I still have access to the doctor's national database, and it helps me find what I need. What little there is. There have been rare cases of such features, but were deemed to be just chance mutations. They were far too rare for much study to be done with them. All the cases seemed to gain tails far faster than normal, but subjects tend to disappear before formal study can occur and were only interviews and checkups at most. An odd coincidence, I consider. The subjects also showed no magical ability. A rather odd mutation for a kitsune.
	An odd comment by a university student on the database caught my interest. Calling the mutation something like a sub-species. The name of it I memorize. Kumiho. Taking it I try and look for anything on them. The database labels it as a hoax, nothing else. So I check it online. All that turns up are fabricated urban legends. All have a similar theme to them however, as I read a few. The
kumihos eat livers. Human livers. I turn the laptop off and go back to my videos now that the trails have dried up. It's the only way I get to sleep anymore, sitting in my chair and drinking something strong.

	The next day I call my boss to talk about what happened, though I leave the bit about the woman being at my house a secret. She doesn't know them, but also dismisses it as a junkie on a trip. I ask for some time at home to take care of a project for a while. She doesn't mind as long as I stay on call for her. I have money saved up to ride on, despite my drinking, so I'll be fine without work for a while.
	The next week and a half I try and fix the poor woman up. She didn't have any belongings, so I can't even find out a name. She stays out like a light, unable to wake up the whole time. Too weak. The food seems to keep her stable, but even the medicine I can get over the counter can't help her. Can't get anything prescribed due to my depression. I'm about to call it quits before an odd thought comes to my mind. Something that seems crazy. She was after a liver that night, after all. There were no symptoms of drugs in her system when I examined her. Can't get a human liver, there weren't going to be fresh corpses at work unless an associate stopped by. But something else might suffice.
	I search around all day in town for an old style butcher. With a city as old as this there was bound to be one that still slaughtered the animals themselves. Eventually, I find one tucked away into an ethnic neighborhood. It's old style alright, they butcher all their animals fresh for the taste. Makes it taste better the people in the neighborhood say, not that much would rot in such a northern place in winter.
	Walking into the butchery, the walls are lined with dried sausages and smoked meats hanging on display. I'm not sure it's hygienic, but that's not why I'm there. Stepping up to the counter I get the attention of the red oni on the other side. She seems to like me, from the smell of alcohol on my clothes, but acts professional all the same.
	"What can I getcha? Haven't seen you around here, look like a north-end guy." She grins, waiting for my order with her butcher apron clean and ready to get filthy that day.
	I adjust my scarf, and take a drink from my flask to help me speak without something stuck in it. "I have a... medical project I'm researching. And I need a lot of something. How many pig livers do you have?"