An excerpt from Byron Dunn’s story, as seen in WEREWOLVES VERSUS: MUSIC.

Everyone else in the chorus was making melodies and harmonies between and against each other. We weren’t The London Werewolves or Scavenge of Song. There would be no Grammys for the Kansas City United Scavenge House Junior Chorus. No blurbs in Rolling Stone saying we were the breakout hit of the werewolf community before the feature article on Beyonce’s secret project. Pitchfork wasn’t listing us in their top ten picks of “magically diverse” musical groups. That doesn’t happen to inter-scavenge extra-curricular teenage howl choruses from Kansas City.

But we weren’t those mundies singing on TV either. Put any one of the other chorus members on something like The Voice and they’d wipe out the competition—so long as no one revealed their magical status and brought out that bigot vote. I, however, was probably nowhere close to that sort of shaming. At least not from mundies.

“Emmerton Morris!” Ms. Lianne said. She waved her hands and the chorus hushed. “What was that?”

Of course people laughed. When weren’t they laughing at me?

“Uh…” I wanted to say ‘howling’ but I had no choice. The truth had to be told. “Singing?”

“Exactly! That was just singing! Shallow, human singing!” She smacked the back of her hand with each word as if she were smacking my own. “Are you human?”

The American Scavenge Association would tell me the answer was yes. More militant groups would say hell the fuck NO. My real answer would have been “Yeah, I mean… I guess> so, but—” and that was not the answer Ms. Lianne wanted. It wasn’t the answer I wanted either.

“No.” I said.

“Then why are you doing it? Howl!” She pointed at my chest. “Isn’t there a wolf in there? Is there anything in there?”

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