Bramblepoint Sweet child o' mine

He hadn't wasted a second. After alerting his family as to what had happened, Elwood had hit the road, loping back towards the scene of the crime with determination. Once there, he paused only briefly at the borders, nose to the ground as he tried to get a whiff of the scent of his daughter's assailant. The black wolf had only visited briefly -- just long enough to scoop up Lucy and carry her away, despite her protests. His scent was not strong, and Elwood was met with frustration.

But that didn't stop him. He stepped outside of Redhawk Caldera for the first time in months and beelined towards Bramblepoint. He marched ahead with a determined step and a hardened glint in his eyes; the typically cordial and genteel wolf would spare nothing to find his child. Adrenaline coursed freely through his veins, driving him forward without fatigue, while a series of emotions washed over him in tandem -- fear, anger, shock, dread.

Once within the tangled confines of the grove he paused, nostrils flaring as he worked to try to find any hint that the monster had passed through here.

It was the first time Shrike would visit the place where the dead murderer's body was buried- and where he'd asked Sassafras to bury him alive, lest he should contaminate anyone in the pack. While he still secretly held onto the belief that his blood was still poisonous, given that he didn't understand how plant poisons worked, he was quite convinced that he himself had become immune or at least tolerant to whatever it was the female had had in her blood. She had died while he had pulled through- but he would still be careful around his packmates, just to make sure he did not put them at risk. 

The tomb barely resembled a den anymore, and looked more like a small patch in the earth where the grass had not yet begun to grow after having been dug into. It had been a small den to begin with, only large enough for two wolves to fit in, so he did not fear that any other creature would try digging in the same place. Her scent was gone, and along with it, Shrike's insane desire to track and kill. He kicked a bit more fresh earth over the spot, tail curled over his back in contempt, before he went on his way. 

He was slightly surprised to catch Elwood's scent- merely because it was a coincidence to find another pack member outside of the pack's borders, but also because neither he nor Elwood- or many other Caldera wolves- tended to leave the pack very often. He'd only just taken to exploring again, and with curiosity dogging him, he drifted in Elwood's direction, following his scent trail until he saw the male, clearly trying to catch a scent. 

Shrike was smart enough to know the look of a wolf scenting prey, and he knew that it was not that kind of look that Elwood had on his face. He was hunting, yes, but there was strain, anguish and anger in his features as well. Senses sharpening and the hairs lifting along his spine, he approached, sniffing as well to see if he could smell anything that might cause alarm. "Elwood," He said quietly, greeting his beta. "What?" He asked quickly and quietly, hoping he could be filled in so he might be helpful. Shrike was, after all, an excellent tracker, and as determined as a dog with a bone once he got a scent trail.

As he moved forward once more with a deeply furrowed brow, Elwood was approached by another wolf. He turned sharply to see Shrike and felt some measure of relief. A friendly face was welcome, and his search party would increase by one. They would surely have more success as a pair than he would have alone.

Shrike uttered a single syllable, but the question begged a longer answer. "It's Lucy," Elwood replied, looking away from his packmate as he continued through the trees and underbrush. "She was kidnapped -- some lone wolf crossed the borders and took her. Lagan saw him -- he said it was a black wolf with red eyes." His voice was strained and his own yellow eyes never ceased their roving, hoping for any sign of Lucy.

Although he anticipated the response to be yes, he asked anyway: "Can you help?" He tried and failed to keep the desperation out of his tone. Shrike was, perhaps, the best wolf for the job -- he had tracked down Peter's assailant, and while that thought caused Elwood's stomach to turn, he knew he needed assistance.

Shrike's heart sank when Elwood explained to him what had happened. His eyes narrowed and he bared just the tips of his teeth in an expression of frustration and grief. Another one. Another kidnapper had taken one of the Caldera's pups, this time a black wolf with red eyes, and a male. Perhaps some sick relative of the one he'd tracked when Peter had been killed, but there was no way to tell. Shrike lowered his head into the pose of a stalker, nostrils twinging. 

"Yes. Got scent?" He asked, knowing that he'd need to start somewhere. Just having the physical description wouldn't be enough to track, though a wolf with red eyes might be something that would travel well through words. If Elwood wasn't on the trail, they could likely scour the borders in that area to find the scent of any wolf that did not belong to their pack that had crossed over. Either way, he was suddenly ready to begin another wolfhunt, even if it took as much out of him as the last one did. Something in his mind told him to go get Sassafras, but he might do that later; time was precious, and if the wolf had simply taken Lucy and hadn't killed her on the spot, they wouldn't have much time to play around with.

In his frank and concise way, Shrike pressed for more information. Elwood gave a frustrated grunt in response. "Not really. He wasn't there long -- I'm not even sure if he headed in this direction," he admitted, his throat constricting as he uttered the words. It was painful to confess and he gritted his teeth, looking away from Shrike.

"But I guess this is as good a place as any to search," he added quickly. "I keep hoping I'll smell Lucy..." His sentence trailed off and he gave an exasperated swipe with his forepaw, tearing a tender branch from a nearby bush and sending it spiraling to the ground. How had this happened?

Shrike gritted his teeth and looked away so Elwood could not see the disdain on his face when he heard that Elwood didn't know the scent. He felt mildly frustrated, knowing that there wasn't exactly a way to track the wolf directly, or even know if they were tracking the right wolf if they did catch a scent. Elwood mentioned hoping that he smelled Lucy, and Shrike pursed his lips. That would be the one way they would be able to discern the male's scent from other, friendly visitors. He assumed that Lucy was being carried, given that she was still small enough to be picked up and toted away, but even carrying a pup, the male would have to stop every now and again to save his neck from carrying her. 

That was, of course, assuming that he didn't simply abduct her so that he could harm her and destroy the evidence not far from the abduction site. But Shrike didn't want to think about that. 

Elwood was frustrated and flustered, and Shrike wasn't terribly adept at expressing sympathy, so he chose action instead. "Gotta find his scent somewhere along the borders. Don't get many visitors here," He said, thankful for once that the Caldera wolves mostly kept to themselves and didn't have visitors too often- that would narrow down the search should they come across multiple scent trails. "I'll go one way. You, the other. Make a complete tour of the borders, call out when we find any non-Caldera scent that's fresh." He said, eyes scanning the area as though to look for some visible marker. "One calls, marks the spot, and follows the scent into the pack. Other one of us goes to the place of the call. 'F that scent leads to where Lucy was taken, call again and one near the border can go right down the scent trail." He said. It sounded relatively easy, but had the wolf been stealthy, or used fox-like tricks, such as passing through water or back-tracking down their path and then bounding high and far enough away of it, to lead a false trail, things would be considerably more difficult. Naturally, though, it was Elwood's call- he was both the Beta and Lucy's father. "Sound okay?" He asked, hoping he hadn't overstepped any boundaries by suggesting a plan rather than letting Elwood come up with one.

Feel free to have Shrike come across a scent in your next post if you want; I was being vague for a little while because I didn't know how things would turn out with Marbas and Lucy landing at NWF! :)

Elwood was a skilled tracker -- he was a gamekeeper, for crying out loud, and his greatest contribution to his pack was his ability to hunt. So why couldn't he find his daughter? His brain was so clouded with emotion that it was hard for him to think straight, but Shrike's direct, clipped instructions somehow cleared the fog and made sense to the father. It gave him a goal -- up until that point, he had been operating without a plan, the only goal being to find Lucy; but even he knew, in the back of his mind, that he would never be successful without knowing the monster's scent.

"Yes," he confirmed, his jaw working. He clenched and unclenched his teeth as he promptly turned back towards the caldera, already moving away from Shrike. He knew that his packmate would go in the opposite direction, circling the borders diligently until they found what they were looking for -- if they managed to do so. Sadness threatened to close his throat, but he refused to think of the alternative. They would find Lucy. They had to.

Shrike didn't waste a moment; once Elwood gave him the go, he nodded briskly and set off at a swift walk, moving into a trot whenever the borders were bare of scent and slowing when he crossed a scent trail. He marked the borders again here and there to make certain that all wolves knew that this was a well guarded pack, but apparently it hadn't been guarded quite well enough to keep their young ones safe. He felt fairly certain that should he ever have pups, they would never, ever be left alone.

Once or twice he caught an jnfamiliar scent, but it was one of the wolves who had visited the pack before and it had been explained to him that thrse scents belonged to family members. It was only when he caught a new scent that he stopped. It was of a male, and definitely not one he had scented before, and it crossed the borders with no escort. 

He tilted his head back and howled, signalling for Elwood that he had found a suspicious scent. Then he picked up a lope and followed the hauntingly fresh scent into the pack lands, breath catching in his throat as he caught Lucy's scent as well, on branches as he passed. She would have been carried, so the stories were matching up. 

And then he found it. The place where the two scents intertwined in their fateful meeting place, and from that place the lone male's scent veered off in another direction- the way he had entered the packlands. Not wasting a moment, he confirmed;

This was him. This was the abductor. And after he howled to Elwood, to get rhe anxious father hot on tge trail, he too bolted for the borders, hoping to join the Beta on his mission to find little Lucy.

I'm going to fade out here -- in threads dated after this one, Elwood has returned to RHC without Lucy, but I kind of alluded to the fact that Shrike is still out searching if that's okay! Feel free to have him continue looking or come back to RHC or whatever you want! :)

It was hard to focus on the task at hand, despite the fact that he desperately needed to fixate every sense on searching for Lucy. Elwood found himself covering ground without realizing it, sifting through scents without really processing them and gazing at the landscape without truly seeing it. More than once, he stopped and gave his head a shake before spurring himself onward with a growl.

When he heard Shrike howl it was almost too good to be true. Elwood's hopes soared even though he was terrified of being let down. He pivoted and began to gallop back across the terrain, ready to begin what would be a long few days of hunting.