Month: May 2025

Jerry bolted around the corner of the venue like the opening act was a pack of debt collectors. The second he was out of Thane’s line of sight, he bent over and wheezed into the shadow of a broken vending machine. His Big Gulp sloshed wildly.

“Holy hell,” he muttered, pulling out his phone. “Call Greg. Call Greg. C’mon…”

The phone rang. And rang. Finally—

“You’ve reached Greg with All-Nite Promotions—”

He hung up and whispered, “Useless, Greg. Just like your inflatable stage dancers.”

Jerry slapped his forehead and darted into the maze of back hallways that connected the kitchen, janitorial closet, and what was generously referred to as the “green room.” He flung open a storage door and fished out a weathered metal cash box hidden behind a crate of expired Sour Punch Straws and three tattered mascot heads.

As he counted out a terrifyingly light stack of twenties, he muttered under his breath.

“No one told me they were real werewolves… I thought it was branding. Like those guys who wear Viking helmets and scream in German.”

He dropped a five on the ground, cursed, and dove after it, cracking his head on a case of discontinued energy drinks.

He staggered out of the closet, hair full of dust bunnies, clutching the envelope of his own doom. On the way back through the corridor, he passed the raccoon trap again. Sure enough, Ralph the raccoon was inside—now eating what was very clearly Maya’s emergency Pop-Tarts.

Jerry slowed down.

“…I’m not getting paid enough for this.”

He trudged on, then stopped at a water cooler with a taped-up hand-scrawled sign:

DO NOT DRINK – VERY SLIGHT SULFUR.
Jerry stared at it. Then drank anyway.

Halfway through his cup, he jumped as Logan—the unpaid college intern in a neon vest—ran up, headset tangled in his neck.

“Mr. Jerry! Mr. Jerry! I think I unplugged something important trying to get the disco ball going and now the fog machine is… uhh… breathing?”

Jerry blinked. “Breathing?”

A low huff… chuff… huff… echoed faintly from down the hall.

“Oh for the love of Meatloaf,” he muttered.

He stormed past Logan, slapping the walkie-talkie out of the kid’s hand as it squawked, “Can someone tell the guy in the parking lot with a ferret on his shoulder he’s not part of the VIP meet-and-greet?”

By the time Jerry reached the stage door again, he was sweating through his khakis. He shoved the envelope toward Thane like it might bite.

“Payment. In full. Don’t kill me.”

Thane opened it. Counted. Nodded.

Jerry sighed in visible relief. Then winced when Gabriel leaned in with a wicked grin and whispered:

“Ralph says hi.”

Jerry screamed.

The sun was barely high enough to warm the rooftop HVAC units when Thane spotted him: the “promoter.” A wiry man in his late 50s wearing a wrinkled polo with a lanyard that said ALL ACCESS and JERRY in Comic Sans. He was nursing a Big Gulp and barking into a walkie-talkie that definitely wasn’t connected to anything.

Thane approached with that special look on his face—the one Mark quietly referred to as pre-murder neutral.

“Jerry,” Thane said flatly.

Jerry blinked and smiled like a guy who’d already spent half the show budget on vape cartridges and frozen chicken tenders. “Hey, buddy! Love the gear! You boys all settled in?”

“We’re patched into what looks like a Soviet missile control panel, the green room smells like regret, and your sound guy just asked Gabriel if XLRs could go into ‘HDMI holes.’”

Jerry squinted. “Well, hey now—Logan and Reese are interns. Gotta give kids a chance, right?”

“They tried to ground the fog machine to a folding chair.”

Jerry chuckled. “Ah, classic stagecraft!” Then he winked. “You know how it is.”

Thane’s claws flexed once, involuntarily.

Gabriel wandered up behind him, sipping a cappuccino he absolutely conjured into existence from pure caffeine willpower. “Hey, Jerry, quick question—who thought putting a raccoon trap near the dressing room was a solid idea?”

Jerry blinked again. “Raccoon trap?”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, lifting his shirt to reveal a thin scratch across his side. “We met Ralph. He’s doing great. Just confused and angry.”

At that exact moment, Maya stormed up, wielding a band tech sheet in one hand. “You gave us a stage plot with six DI boxes. We need sixteen.”

Jerry looked at it. “Well, y’know, we usually have more… stripped down acts. You guys got a lotta… what do you call ‘em? Wolf… requirements?”

“You booked a band with three werewolves and a pyro license,” Thane said, voice low and lethal. “You knew who we were.”

“Well, not me personally,” Jerry hedged. “Booking’s handled by my assistant. She’s out on medical leave. Got kicked by a donkey.”

Thane stared.

Mark walked up behind them, arms folded, voice dry as a dust storm. “You know what? I believe that.”

Jerry, sweating a little now, waved a hand. “Look, it’s all gonna be great. We’ve got drinks in the green room—”

“There’s a Capri Sun and a can of expired La Croix,” Gabriel said.

“And I’m sure the crowd’s gonna be awesome!”

“We haven’t seen a single piece of promo,” Maya snapped. “No flyers. No marquee. One guy outside asked if this was a laser tag tournament.”

“I’ll refund some on the backend,” Jerry said, already backing away.

“No,” Thane said firmly. “You’re going to pay up front, in cash, or we walk.”

Gabriel smiled behind him. “And if we walk, Jerry, we’re taking your car battery with us.”

Jerry stared for one frozen moment.

Then nodded. “I’ll go get the envelope.”

He scurried off like a caffeinated squirrel.

Thane turned to the others, exhaling hard. “Anyone else want to quit humanity and start a fire?”

Mark raised a hand without looking up from his light board app. “Already halfway there.”

Soundcheck – 5:12 PM – The Throttle Room, Tulsa

Inside the dim, echoing venue, chaos had matured into its final form: full-blown soundcheck.

Thane stood at the front of house, icy eyes squinting at a sea of glowing signal lights that should have all been green… but weren’t. His clawed fingers hovered above the board like a predator deciding which channel to maul first.

On stage, Jonah was in a drum-induced trance, hammering out an unnecessarily aggressive soundcheck solo that sounded like someone beating a metal trash can full of raccoons.

“Jonah!” Thane barked into the com. “I said kick drum, not war crimes in F minor!”

“I’m setting the mood!” Jonah called back. “You want energy or not?”

Mark stood at the lighting desk, index finger poised over a cue button, jaw clenched so hard you could’ve used it to cut glass. The VariLites had just decided they were unionized and on break, one was strobing in protest, and another was spinning lazily in an endless barrel roll like it had given up on life.

Rico was tuning, not really to any specific note—just plucking and turning knobs like a DJ looking for a vibe. Cassie tapped her mic and said, “Check one, check one, check—this smells like old soup in here. Is that normal?”

Maya was leaning into her amp, one hand wrapped around the neck of her guitar, unleashing a soundcheck riff so filthy it might’ve actually insulted someone’s mother.

“I’m getting feedback,” she shouted.

Thane slammed the solo button on channel 14. “You’re not getting feedback, your amp is trying to communicate with the spirit realm.”

From the back, Gabriel—sipping a comically large coffee with “HELLO I’M A PROBLEM” scribbled on the cup—called out with a grin, “Everything sounds great back here!”

Cassie turned. “Of course it does, bass players never get complaints.”

Gabriel raised a brow. “Because we’re the glue, baby.”

“You’re glue in that you’re sticky and inexplicably everywhere,” Maya shot back.

Mark, not looking up from his console, added: “Also he smells like tape.”

Rico struck a chord that screeched like a banshee.

“Okay!” Thane roared over the din, now holding an XLR cable in one hand and what appeared to be a chicken nugget someone had left on the power amp. “If anyone else touches anything, I will personally rewire this entire rig using your nervous systems as patch cable.”

A brief silence fell. Somewhere, a single monitor whined pitifully.

Cassie cleared her throat. “So… do we do the encore now or later?”

Mark sighed so hard the fog machine accidentally triggered. “I am one flickering light cue away from walking into the river.”

Thane grabbed his com mic. “Gabriel, level check.”

Gabriel slung his bass into place and played a clean, low E that filled the room like thunder through a cave. He looked at Thane with a wink.

Thane’s eye twitched.

“…Level’s fine.”

Mark finally hit a working light cue. Six VL2Bs bathed the stage in a glorious red haze. The smoke curled around the amps, the glow caught Maya’s pick mid-riff, and for one brief, shining moment—Feral Eclipse looked like an actual, professional touring band.

Then Jonah shouted, “Let’s do ‘Silver Fangs’ from the top!” and accidentally hit a crash so hard it shut off half the stage power.

Cassie blinked. “Is that… supposed to happen?”

Thane just stood still, cable dangling from one clawed hand, and muttered, “Why do I even have surge protectors…”

Gabriel raised his coffee cup and toasted the static-laced silence. “Soundcheck complete!”

The venue was impressive… in the same way a derailed train was impressive. A hulking maze of exposed girders, concrete floors that still bore forklift scars from the 90s, and power junctions that looked like they’d been last inspected during the Carter administration. Feral Eclipse had played sketchy gigs before, but this one practically screamed OSHA violation.

Thane stepped out of the van first, coiled audio cable slung over one shoulder, squinting through the fluorescent haze of the back loading bay.

A dented sign above the rusting security door read in faded paint:
“Welcome Artists – Rock the Steel!”

Gabriel hopped out behind him, immediately sniffing the air and making a face.
“Why does this place smell like hot pennies and armpit?”

Mark, already grumbling as he unfolded a stage schematic that had clearly been faxed sometime before Y2K, muttered, “Because the electrical is running through an old iron smelting conduit. Probably still got the ghosts of union workers in the walls.”

Inside, the “house sound crew” turned out to be two teenagers who looked like they’d just wandered in off a vape break. One wore a lanyard that said “Audio Intern.” The other wore no lanyard and may or may not have just been somebody’s cousin.

“Y’all plug in that DI snake and just slap the XLRs into that junction box,” the older teen mumbled, pointing toward a panel of exposed wiring that looked less like a stage connection and more like a cyberpunk bomb defusal puzzle.

Thane stared at it for a long beat, then turned slowly to Mark.
“I swear to Luna if that panel arcs while I’m patching in, you’re in charge of explaining to Gabriel why I’m a skeleton now.”

Mark just snorted. “I’ll bring a mop.”

Gabriel, meanwhile, had already wandered off to scout the green room, only to find it locked and the key missing. A janitor eventually opened it using a screwdriver and a threat.

Inside, the room was… not up to code. The sofa was shedding foam like it was molting, and the wall-mounted mirror had “HAIL SATAN” scratched faintly into one corner.

Gabriel looked around, unphased. “We’ve played worse.”
Then he opened the mini fridge.
“Okay, nope. There’s a Slim Jim in here that’s older than me.”

Back outside, Jonah was trying to tune his kit, but every time he hit the snare, a power cable behind him sparked against the wall.

“I swear to God,” Jonah hissed, “this whole building is trying to kill me.”

“Get in line,” Maya muttered, wrapping her guitar cable in a tight coil. “The sound guy just told me not to worry about grounding. I told him I wasn’t planning on becoming a lightning rod with tits.”

Rico was the only one taking it in stride. He was balancing a cymbal on one hand like a waiter with a tray and chatting up one of the lighting techs.
“Yeah, no, it’s cool,” he said. “We’ve survived worse. Once played a show in a warehouse where the monitor mix came from a boombox on a broomstick.”

Thane, at this point, had pried open the side junction panel and found an entire family of roaches living on the circuit breakers.

He closed it again very, very gently.

Mark caught up beside him. “Think we’re gonna die?”

Thane exhaled slowly. “Nah. We’ll survive.”

Then, deadpan: “But someone else might not.”

The tour van was parked in a desolate corner of a truck stop in rural Kansas, surrounded by flat plains, distant wind turbines, and not much else. Inside, the air was thick with unspoken grievances and the lingering scent of artificial bacon spray.

Gabriel sat sprawled on the long couch, sipping coffee like it held the secrets of the universe. Maya stood near the kitchenette, arms crossed, one brow raised like a queen awaiting her judgment. Jonah paced back and forth at the center of the lounge like a man preparing closing arguments for a trial that might end in bloodshed.

Thane, seated at the head of the table with his arms crossed and icy blue eyes locked in kill mode, banged a fist against the faux-wood surface. “Alright. Tour Van War Council is now in session. Someone tell me why there’s a bite mark on the emergency fire extinguisher and why our drummer smells like a Mardi Gras float that died in a microwave.”

Jonah spun on his heel. “Because these two,” — he pointed violently between Gabriel and Maya — “have declared WAR on basic decency.”

Gabriel raised his cup. “It was performance art.”

Maya smirked. “It was justice.”

Mark, in his usual gruff monotone from the back, muttered, “It was Tuesday.”

Rico slid into a seat beside Thane, quietly munching cereal from a Solo cup and watching the drama unfold like it was morning cartoons. “Continue.”

Jonah slammed the drum throne onto the center of the table. It let out a low, squeaky groan. “This thing has been violated. It moaned when I sat on it. It moaned, Gabriel.”

Gabriel, straight-faced, took a long sip. “You should feel flattered.”

Thane pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaled slowly through clenched teeth, and fixed a glare on the entire room. “Okay. This has to stop. No more glitter bombs. No more bacon oil in shampoo bottles. No more seducing inanimate objects for shock value. We are on tour. This is not ‘Prank Olympics: 2025 Edition.’”

Mark, still leaning in the hallway with his arms crossed, added helpfully, “You forgot the goat sounds app played on loop through the PA system at 3 AM.”

Gabriel raised a finger. “Technically, that was my contribution to the cultural enrichment of the van.”

Maya growled. “He was trying to summon eldritch barnyard spirits, I swear.”

Thane leaned forward slowly. “So help me, if anyone—and I mean anyone—so much as whispers the word ‘mayonnaise’ near my bunk again, I will reroute this van to the nearest swamp, and we will all get out.”

Jonah sat down, rubbing his temples. “I just want peace. And a new drum throne that doesn’t moan at me.”

Gabriel reached over, gently patting his shoulder. “I’ll get you one that purrs instead.”

“NO!!!”

Rico raised his spoon. “Motion to install security cameras.”

Thane grunted. “Motion denied. I don’t want to know what happens when the lights go out.”

Maya raised her hand. “Motion to launch phase two of the war under cover of darkness?”

“Denied!”

Gabriel leaned back. “Motion to rename the drum throne ‘Sebastian’ and treat him with dignity.”

“DENIED!”

Jonah stood, pointing at Gabriel. “I’m watching you, coffee wolf. You’re one glitter sneeze away from getting duct-taped to the roof.”

Thane slammed the gavel (which was just a rolled-up setlist). “Council adjourned. No more pranks, or I swear I will superglue this entire tour into submission.”

The room was silent… for three seconds.

Mark coughed.

The drum throne moaned.

Gabriel burst out laughing.

Location: Hotel Lobby, 9:42 a.m. The Morning After The Chaos.

Thane stood at the front desk of the hotel, deadpan and growling under his breath, arms crossed over a Feral Eclipse hoodie that still faintly reeked of smoky beef jerky and artificial lavender.

The front desk clerk, poor soul, was trying very hard not to comment.

Behind Thane, chaos unfolded in layers.

Gabriel strutted through the lobby like a caffeinated rockstar fresh out of a glitter tornado—smiling, waving at confused guests, sipping a to-go cup of god-knows-what with two tiny lavender fog machine scent cartridges stuck in his jacket pocket like trophies.

Mark stood near the elevator, arms folded, brow twitching violently as he stared at the drum throne that Jonah carried under one arm, which now let out a loud, wet fart every time it was slightly touched.

“I WOKE UP TO HOWLING UNDER MY PILLOW!” Jonah barked. “And my hair smells like smoked brisket and grandma’s bath salts!”

“Yogic barbecue,” Gabriel said smoothly, sipping.

Rico passed by, muttering, “I can’t sit down anymore. I have PTSD. From a chair.”

Thane turned slowly, ice-blue eyes locked on Gabriel, Jonah, and Maya—who had the audacity to walk in last with an innocent smile and sunglasses on indoors like nothing had happened.

“I’m only going to say this once,” Thane growled, loud enough that even nearby guests turned.

“I find one more prank, one more scent bomb, one more sound byte…
…I swear on the ancestors, I will reassign all of you to overnight merch duty in rural Kansas. In February.
And if you think I won’t, try me.”

Silence.

Even Gabriel looked sheepish…ish.

Mark gave a satisfied grunt of approval.

Then—BZZZZZT. A small, fuzzy howl burst from inside Thane’s hoodie pocket.

Everyone froze.

Gabriel paled. “That was supposed to be Jonah’s!”

Thane closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. And growled, “Merch duty. All. Of. You.”

Location: The Tour Van, Somewhere Outside Denver. Time: 2:47 a.m. The War Room.

The van’s overhead lights were off. The others were asleep. The hum of tires on the freeway created a white noise blanket.

But in the very back of the van, beneath a makeshift blanket fort of hoodies and empty merch boxes…

…sat three absolute gremlins.

Maya, cross-legged, scribbling frantically in her prank journal.
Gabriel, perched on a cooler like a caffeinated gargoyle, a Sharpie in each hand.
Jonah, hoodie up, arms folded, glitter still in his ears, eyes haunted.

“This ends now,” Jonah whispered, glaring at both of them. “Or I go scorched earth.”

Gabriel grinned, wild and fangy. “Scorched earth sounds fun.”

Maya leaned forward, eyes gleaming like a dragon plotting arson. “You two amateurs forget—I’ve literally superglued a tour manager’s shoes to the ceiling of a club bathroom.”

Gabriel snorted. “You were kicked out of Tijuana twice.”

“Three times,” she corrected. “One involved a goat.”

Jonah held up a finger. “Okay, focus. We call a truce, we go out in one glorious blaze of prank-fueled glory, together. No casualties. Well—maybe Thane’s patience, but that doesn’t count.”

Gabriel raised a brow. “What’re we talkin’? Glitterbombs in the XLR cables? Hair dye in Mark’s shampoo?”

Jonah leaned in. “We fill the fog machines with scented mist. Like… lavender and beef jerky.”

Gabriel’s eyes lit up. “We make the audience think we’re summoning a werewolf yoga class and a barbecue.”

Maya scribbled fast. “We install Bluetooth speakers under every bunk. Play random wolf howls at 3:00 a.m. every night until someone cracks.”

They high-fived. The unholy pact was sealed.

From the bunk behind them, Thane’s voice growled low and cold.

“If you glue anything else in this van, I will rewire your toothbrushes to play Nickelback.”

Silence.

Gabriel cleared his throat. “…worth it.”

Day 6. Tour Van. Prank War Level: Escalated.

Jonah didn’t sleep that night.

Not because of the glitter stuck in places glitter should never be. Not because Rico kept humming “It’s Raining Men” every time he walked past him. Not even because he found a flake of holographic confetti in his toothbrush.

No.

Jonah was plotting.

And the next morning, vengeance arrived with the quiet hum of a soldering iron, a suspicious package of cheap Halloween props, and a laptop full of MIDI mappings.

Gabriel was the first target. Of course he was.

While the black-furred werewolf snored peacefully in the bunk above, Jonah spent three hours surgically modifying Gabriel’s pedalboard. He didn’t touch any of the critical tones—Jonah respected music too much for that. But every time Gabriel toggled the distortion channel…

Fart noises.

Wet, echoing, slow-motion fart noises.

Custom-mapped to his tone stomp. Through the arena PA. Complete with bass boost.

---

Showtime. That night. Kansas City.

Thane was dialed in at FOH. Mark was stalking the lighting rig with laser focus. Maya was shredding. Rico was slamming out the opening beat of “Hollow Heart.”

Gabriel, center stage, flipped on the distortion…

PPPPPPBBBBBBTTHHHHHHHHHHH.

The crowd fell silent for a full second.

Then roared with laughter.

Gabriel froze.

He toggled the pedal again.

BRRRAAAAAPPPPP-P-POP.

He spun around. “WHO DID THIS?!”

Jonah was behind the drum kit, smirking like a war criminal.

Rico actually fell off his stool laughing. Maya missed a chord. Even Mark paused the light cues, a clawed hand to his face.

Thane, over the comms:

“I swear to every moon that ever shined, I will end all of you.”

---

Backstage. Later.

Gabriel cornered Jonah with a half-full bottle of Fireball and a feral grin. “Okay. You got me. That was genius.”

Jonah narrowed his eyes. “We’re even?”

Gabriel tilted his head. “Even?”

And dumped the Fireball over Jonah’s head.

Jonah screamed. “MY EYES. IT BURNS.”

---

Somewhere in the shadows of the arena, Maya scribbled in a little black notebook labeled: ‘Prank Ideas.’

A single line:

“Duct tape + fog cannon + bag of flour.”

The war… continues. 😈

Day 5. Tour van. Spirits high. Sanity low.

Jonah was having a good day.

He’d just crushed the last show, fans had actually cheered his solo, and he’d snagged the last iced Red Bull from the gas station cooler before Gabriel. (That alone was an achievement worth framing.)

He had no idea he was walking into a war zone.

Gabriel had rigged a glitter bomb in Maya’s overhead cubby—an elaborate setup involving a tripwire, a container of “UltraSparkle Unicorn Confetti™,” and about 20 minutes of whispered scheming with Rico.

But no one told Jonah.

He reached up to grab his spare hoodie from the cubby, humming some dumb TikTok song—and BOOM.

An explosion of pink, purple, and silver glitter erupted like a Vegas finale.

Jonah staggered back, choking, sparkling, arms flailing like a disco ball with PTSD.

“WHY AM I TASTING GLITTER!?”

Maya looked up from her book just in time to see Jonah coated from eyebrows to boots.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, eyes wide. “They got a civilian.”

Rico wheezed from the kitchenette, trying not to drop the microwave burrito he was clutching. “Collateral damage. Man down!”

Jonah stormed down the aisle of the van, glitter sticking to his neck like guilt. “WHO. DID. THIS.”

Gabriel looked up from his laptop, eyes full of fake innocence. “Wasn’t me, sparklecake.”

Jonah pointed both hands at the ceiling. “It came from the cubby above your seat, bro!”

Gabriel smirked. “Then maybe you shouldn’t go poking around other people’s—”

“SHUT UP,” Jonah snapped, glitter puffing from his chest as he shouted.

Mark leaned into the aisle just far enough to mutter, “You look like a Bratz doll exploded.”

Thane, still re-coding the lighting cue list from the co-pilot seat, didn’t even turn around. “I swear to Fenrir, if I find a single sequin in the fog cannon again, I will break both of you.”

Jonah threw himself into his seat, fuming, still sparkling under the overhead light. “I drum for this band. I have dignity. I am a respected—”

Gabriel flicked a single piece of confetti at him.

Jonah growled. Growled. It wasn’t impressive. It came out like a Labrador who’s just seen a squirrel.

“Okay,” Jonah muttered. “Okay. You want war? You want sparkle warfare? Fine.”

The van went quiet.

Then Maya, eyes gleaming, said, “Welcome to the chaos, rookie.”

Somewhere in Arizona, 2:00 PM. Desert heat outside. Air conditioning and vendettas inside.

It started innocently enough. A harmless joke.

Gabriel had swapped Maya’s guitar picks with ones that glowed in the dark and had tiny cartoon wolves on them. He’d even labeled the bag “FOR THE ALPHA BITCH.”

Maya found them right before rehearsal.

“Cute,” she said, flatly.

Gabriel just grinned from his seat, sipping coffee from a cup that said Bass Players Do It Deeper.

The next morning, Gabriel opened his gear case and found his entire bass string set swapped out for pink nylon ukulele strings. There was a glittery sticker on the lid: “REVENGE SERVED HOT, LIKE MY ATTITUDE.”

Mark smirked quietly from the back row, watching it unfold like a slow-motion car crash.

Thane, who was trying to reroute a shorted cable in the lighting rack, didn’t even look up. “Whatever this is—don’t involve me.”

By Day 3, it had escalated.

Gabriel hid a Bluetooth speaker under Maya’s seat and played fart noises during every bump in the road. Maya filled Gabriel’s shampoo bottle with green hair dye that turned his mane into a mossy nightmare.

“You’re gonna rue this day,” he hissed, towel-wrapped, lime-green and furious.

“Oh no,” Maya replied, deadpan. “Is the emo wolf gonna write poetry about it?”

Rico and Jonah had started keeping score with dry-erase markers on the fridge door:
Maya – 4 | Gabriel – 3 (minus 1 for green hair)

Thane, having had enough, declared the back two rows of the van a Neutral Zone. Any war fought beyond that line would be met with growls and actual werewolf retribution.

Naturally, Gabriel mounted a stuffed raccoon head on the boundary with a sign that read: “NO GODS, NO LAWS, NO THANE.”

Mark kicked it clean out the van door at a gas station.

But then—then came the nuke.

Gabriel waited until Maya was napping and replaced her phone’s keyboard autocorrect. Every time she typed “guitar,” it changed to “butt flute.” “Stage” became “puppy zone.” “Feral Eclipse” turned into “Fluffy Glitter Wolves.”

The group text was unreadable for hours.

“Gonna shred the butt flute at the puppy zone tonight!! LET’S GO FLUFFY GLITTER WOLVES!!”

Even Thane had to pause and laugh.

But Maya… she bided her time.

That night, as Gabriel was climbing into his bunk, the entire thing collapsed—bolts loosened, screws missing, held up by zip ties and vengeance. He hit the floor with a thud and a yelp.

Everyone turned.

Maya leaned against the bathroom door, arms crossed. “Call me ‘alpha bitch’ again.”

Gabriel groaned from the floor, rubbing his ribs. “…Respect.”

The scoreboard on the fridge now read:
Maya – 6 | Gabriel – 2 (bonus point for creativity deducted for medical risk)

The house lights dropped. A low rumble coursed through the stadium. Murmurs of the crowd grew into a rolling tide of anticipation. The massive LED wall lit up in a crimson glow as the Feral Eclipse logo burst to life—claws slashing through light, sound, and sanity.

Behind the black curtain, the band stood together—werewolves and humans alike, shoulder to shoulder in the breathless seconds before chaos.

Thane adjusted the strap of his utility harness, one hand coiled around the thick black audio cable like a weapon. His ice-blue eyes burned. Gabriel stood beside him, bass guitar slung across his shoulder, grinning like a demon with a caffeine IV. Mark towered nearby, arms folded, legs braced like a statue built for war.

“Let’s tear their souls out,” Thane growled, loud enough for only his pack to hear.

Jonah, drumsticks spinning in his fingers, grinned. “Wasn’t planning to do anything less.”

Maya cracked her knuckles, already halfway snarling in anticipation. “Time to remind the world who we are.”

Rico double-checked his guitar tuning one last time. “If I puke, just play around it.”

The curtain snapped upward with a hydraulic hiss.

A wall of white-hot light exploded over the crowd.

And Feral Eclipse erupted.

Mark launched the light rig into overdrive—six VariLite VL2Bs mounted along the truss above the stage fired pulsing red beams down into the fog, slicing through smoke and madness like laser fangs. The strobes kicked into sync with the first beat.

Gabriel exploded forward, feet pounding the stage, claws digging into the plywood as he slammed the opening bass riff hard enough to rattle teeth in the cheap seats. His hair flared behind him like a shadowy halo. He screamed wordlessly into the roar of the crowd, feeding off their wild energy like fire on gasoline.

Maya, planted to Gabriel’s left, had transformed into a literal rhythm machine—her fingers a blur on the strings, body rolling with each hard riff. She looked feral in her own way, fire blazing in her eyes.

Rico’s solos screamed over the top of it all—beautiful chaos woven into thunder.

Jonah was a human blur behind the kit, sweat flying from his arms like rain in a hurricane.

And Mark—oh, Mark—was a one-man lighting apocalypse. He sent pulsing reds, savage whites, and shadowy blues blasting across the crowd in waves that matched the beat so tightly the audience could feel the rhythm in their ribs.

The crowd? Lost their damn minds.

People screamed, cried, threw shirts, waved clawed hand signs. Several fans in the front row were howling—literally howling—along with Gabriel as he leaned out over the barricade, baring his fangs and slapping hands with total strangers like he’d known them all his life.

By the time they reached their third song, “Lunar Burn,” the entire crowd was bouncing in unison, an ocean of bodies worshiping at the altar of claws and chords.

And then—mid-song, no warning—Thane flipped the fog cannons to full.

A flood of low-lying fog spilled across the stage. The red beams from above tore through it, slicing through the mist like blades. Gabriel stood dead center in it, bass slung low, eyes glowing like embers as he lifted his arms and howled.

The crowd howled back.

No music.

Just that moment.

That shared madness.

Then—BOOM. Jonah’s drumline kicked in. Maya screamed into the chorus. Rico spun into a solo so hot it should’ve come with a warning label.

They had something here.

Something real.

After the final encore, the lights dimmed. The crowd screamed for more, even as the stage went dark.

And in the shadows, Gabriel leaned over to Thane and whispered, breathless:

“We’re not a band anymore.”

Thane tilted his head. “Oh?”

Gabriel grinned wide, fangs flashing.

“We’re a goddamn movement.”