Chapter 50 Preparing For The Summit - Mayor Goodwin

• The ice melted and watered down the bourbon in the glass, but Mayor Xavier Goodwin didn't notice. He was too busy staring up at the moon, thinking of the fact that by this time tomorrow, he would be deep in the wolf's lair, as he had thought of it. Xavier wondered if he would ever walk out. When he finally sipped on his bourbon, he didn't notice how watered down it was. He simply kept staring at the moon, and thinking.
• He had spent years and years being terrified of werewolves. Like most children his age, he'd never even met them before, only seen pictures of them in the news, in articles and books. The way they'd been treated in the past (and even now) had always disgusted him, and he had never agreed to anything discriminatory on principle. Even after that day had come and he'd seen them for the first time in the flesh, when a werewolf had attacked him and his parents.
• With hindsight, he knew his father was at fault. They had been camping perilously close to the wolf's land, and didn't even ask for permission. When his mother had asked, he had just snorted derisively and said, "Ask permission from some wild animals? You've got to be kidding me." They were both scientists, but his father had no respect for anyone who wasn't like him. His father also believed in the notion that Man has conquered all of Nature. To him, werewolves were an outdated idea, a holdover from when humans still feared boogeymen in the dark and relied on claws and fangs to defend themselves. He wondered often why werewolves didn't just try to find a cure for themselves. He was, in retrospect, the kind of person that Jack Fisher was looking for. And that had gotten his family into trouble.