I GOT OUT in front with Ben, who held his gun in hand, ready to fire. He could take out one, maybe two of them before they attacked. I’d be ready to follow up. Not taking a chance this time, he pulled the trigger—and nothing happened. He squeezed it again, and again. “Jammed,” he muttered, and threw the thing away, growling.
It wasn’t the gun, I thought. It was the tunnels. No flashlights, no gun, probably no cell phones. At least I couldn’t mess up his aim this time.
The lead werewolf smiled.
“You have a plan?” Ben said. His hands flexed, his shoulders bunched. He met the man’s stare across the few paces separating us. Way too few paces. I glared at the wolves, challenging, not backing down. They were big, two hundred pounds—bulky, lupine versions of their human forms and even more threatening. Their teeth were bared, their ears pinned back.
“Keep them away from Cormac and Grace,” I said. Anastasia could damn well take care of herself.
“Generic. Flexible. I like it,” he said, with a little more snark than the situation called for.
“Okay then.”
Anastasia shouldered past me, upsetting my balance so I rocked into Ben. “Hey!”
“They must have the pearl,” Anastasia said. “They know where Roman is.”
I tried to growl at her while not taking my stare off the wolves. “Anastasia—protect them.” I pointed at the two humans behind us.
Intent on staring down our enemy, she didn’t seem concerned with them at all. If we had an escape route, I’d be happy letting her take care of the wolves all by herself. But we were cornered and someone had to look after the most vulnerable in the group. The three of us formed a wall across the passageway. On the plus side, the space was defensible—as long as we could keep the werewolves out of the room, Cormac and Grace would be safe. On the other hand, we had no space. No room to pace, to circle, to flank, to attack. They must have felt the same way, because they didn’t attack, either. We were sizing each other up. I must have seemed insignificant to them. Ben wouldn’t look like much more of a threat. But our experience counted for a lot.
The pack of werewolves had halted their approach. The human thug said, “All right. Where is it?”
I blinked and cocked my head. “Where is what?”
“You know what I’m talking about. The safe is empty—what did you do with it?”
“We thought you had it,” I said.
Ben glanced at me. “You don’t have to tell them that.”
“Well, I’m confused,” I said. I pointed at them. “You guys don’t have it?”
“We’re not stupid. Hand it over and you can leave,” the leader said. The two wolves stepped forward, their lips drawing back and noses wrinkling as they snarled.
Anastasia donned a regal pose, chin up, staring down at the peons around her. “Your Master must know he can’t win,” she said to our opponents.
The wolves’ hackles were getting stiffer, the fur down their back standing straight up, and they weren’t going to back off. “We just want what was in the safe.”
“Yes, and we leave here alive, you said that,” she said. “Or, if you’d rather, you can deliver a message to Roman for me—and I will allow you to leave here alive.”
The guy actually took a step back, uncertainty tightening his features—a show of weakness that made my own Wolf perk up. We can take him …
But he shook himself and pulled back his lips, showing teeth. “Then you really don’t have it. So there’s no reason to keep you alive at all.”
The wolves launched.
Ben and I sprang forward to meet them. Inside me, my Wolf snarled, her teeth bared and claws outstretched, ready to slash. My crooked fingers matched the impulse. I would keep myself together as long as I could, but I would shift if I had to, to win this fight. I was cornered, and that might be my only option.
Ben slammed into the wolf on the right, and they both tumbled to the floor. The wolf on the left, the one I was about to tackle, squealed and writhed in a sudden pain. I stumbled as I pulled up—I hadn’t touched him yet.
Cormac yelled, “Kitty, the knife, it’s silver! Use it!”
Sure enough, the wolf had four inches of slim wooden handle protruding from his shoulder. If the blade was silver, the wolf was finished. Cormac must have thrown it from behind me. I didn’t want to think about what would have happened if he’d missed and gotten me instead. Despite all we’d been through and all the times he hadn’t killed me, I still worried.
Whining with each breath, the wolf was twisted back on himself, trying to bite and claw out the knife. I rushed forward to pull it out and finish the job, and move onto the next one—but the leader beat me to it. He yanked the knife out and stayed crouched over his henchwolf, holding the weapon with a sure grip and a braced arm, defensive. I backed away.
The guy and the knife were still way too close to Ben and the other werewolf. Ben had blood on him, streaking from cuts on his arms. He was doing a good job keeping the wolf away from vital bits—the wolf attacked, and Ben kicked his belly, sending him tumbling away. The creature sprang right back, biting and slashing. Ben blocked with his arms, which took the brunt of the attack, but he couldn’t keep this up forever.
The leader of the trio stayed by the fallen wolf, a hand resting on his fur, trying to comfort the animal even as he held the knife ready. The wolf lay flat now, panting for breath, whining as the silver did its work, poisoning his blood. They might have been mercenaries, but they were still a pack.
The damned fox thing wailed again. A second later, a ball of ruddy fur rocketed over my head and slammed into the werewolf leader, using those needlelike teeth on his face. I looked over my shoulder—Grace stood by the now-open cage, a penknife in hand. She’d opened one side of it, cutting the twine that held the bamboo poles together. Lips pursed, she looked scared but determined.
The nine-tailed fox thrashed and yipped, biting at the werewolf leader’s face. Blood spattered as the man screamed and batted at it, slashing with the knife, trying to shove it away. The fox wasn’t interested in us or our fight. As soon as it had cleared the blockade of people in the corridor, it raced ahead and away, around the corner and out of sight.
Pain and anger pushed the leader over the edge—jagged flaps of skin hung loose from a bloody cheek where the fox had ripped into him. His eyes had turned golden, and he bared his teeth in a snarl. I could jump him while he was shifting—maybe distract him long enough for the rest of us to get away, or at least draw the other wolf away from Ben. But he still held that silver knife.
Anastasia stepped between us. Growling, the werewolf slashed at her—and she moved. I assumed she moved; it happened too quickly for me to see clearly. She was in front of me, took a step, and then she stood next to the werewolf, holding the knife while she twisted his wrist and wrenched his arm behind him hard enough to make the joints pop. Crying out, he fell against her, bending back to relieve the pressure. Calmly, she placed the knife across his throat.
At his leader’s cry, the other wolf fell back, leaving Ben alone. In the pause that followed as we assessed, all of our breathing was audible as panicked, nervous gasps. All except Anastasia.
“Nobody move,” she said softly, which seemed redundant.
I glanced at Ben, who had slumped against the wall, catching his breath, keeping us all in view. He was cut and bruised, but gave me a quick nod—he’d survive. The still-functioning wolf faced us, stiff-legged, as if not knowing whether to attack or run. He was watching his leader, who twitched like he wanted to move, but every time he did, Anastasia squeezed his arm or pressed the knife to his skin. I could feel Cormac behind me, looking over my shoulder. Grace was still far back in the room.
On the floor in the middle of our gathering, the wolf Cormac had injured had started to shift back to human. Bones melted and resolidified in their original forms; gray and tawny fur faded, thinned, and once again became skin, now marred with black streaks along the veins, radiating from the wound in his shoulder. The silver poisoning had killed him.
Anastasia leaned close to the ear of her captive. “I very much suggest you answer my questions now.”
He managed to snarl without moving.
“Where is Roman?”
“I don’t know,” he said around growls huffing with every breath. His hands flexed, his body braced, tense. He was on the edge, ready to shift in panic despite the vampire’s threats.
Behind me, Cormac watched. He had a second knife in hand, a slender, aerodynamic piece designed for throwing. Where did he get these things? His felony conviction kept him from carrying guns. Were knives okay then?
Grace peered out from around the doorway. The knife she’d used on the cage was a mini Leatherman-type tool on a keychain. It wouldn’t do any good against werewolves, but at least it was something. Her other hand held the candle lantern, the light of which wavered as her hand shook.
I went to her, taking her hand. “You have to get out of here.”
Anastasia watched as I led Grace to the wall and edged around the group. Nobody said anything, but they didn’t look happy, either. Like I was disturbing the delicate, temporary peace by moving, introducing variables. I just wanted one less vulnerable party trapped in the room. I kept her behind me, until we were past the vampire and werewolves, until she had a way to escape.
Once we’d reached open corridor, I pushed her. “Get out of here, go!”
“But you can’t—”
“I don’t want you to get bitten. We can find you later.”
Frowning, she studied me a moment. Then she turned and ran, the light of her candle bobbing along with her. The remaining wolf twitched, as if to chase her, but I planted myself in front of him and showed teeth. Just try it, my Wolf said to his. He drew back his lips but didn’t move. The sound of Grace’s footsteps retreated, then disappeared, and I felt better. Not a lot better, but better.
Now, the only light we had came from the lantern in the room. That, and a dim, phosphorescent glow seeping from the walls around us, as if it was growing there. My vision adjusted—the figures before me were still shadows, monsters writhing in the darkness. Behind me, Cormac snapped on a penlight, which flickered before burning out in a flash. He shook the device, but it stayed off.
The impasse with the werewolves still remained.
Anastasia purred at her victim, “Moving on, then. Can you tell me, does Roman know that I’m here?”
“Obviously he does, he sent these clowns,” Ben said. The vampire glared at him, and he glared right back, wiping blood from his chin with the back of his hand and wincing.
I wanted to rush over, snuggle against him, and lick his face—an action that was perfectly natural to my Wolf, but felt odd in human skin. One of those things that made my divided self seem even more divided than usual. If we’d been alone I might have given into the impulse. But I had to stay here and keep the hallway blocked to make sure the wolf didn’t decide to chase after Grace. I wished Ben knew what I was thinking.
Anastasia returned to her interrogation. “How much does Roman know?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must know something.”
“Keep them busy. Get the thing from them if they have it. That’s all.” He rolled his eyes at me.
“Keep them busy because they’re helping me?”
I glared at her. “Geez, this isn’t all about you!”
“Stay out of this, Kitty.”
“God, your name really is Kitty,” the captive said, stifling a chuckle.
“Quiet,” Anastasia breathed.
“You’re already too late.” He grimaced, lips drawn back, jaw rigid—a vicious snarl. He’d given up. All he had left was anger and rebellion. Lunging forward, he pressed himself toward the knife at his throat; she pulled it away before he could cut himself on it. No matter how much he thrashed, she was too strong. He couldn’t break free. It was so incongruous—she looked so small, so elegant. Yet she could overpower a werewolf.
“Quiet!”
“You wanted me to talk! I’m talking.” He snapped his teeth, saliva spattering from his mouth. His chin tipped up, and his face was breaking, jaws growing, eyes turning gold, ears narrowing—he was shifting to wolf, and he was laughing.
She dropped the knife and held onto him with both hands. Wrenching his arm back even more, she bared her own teeth, showing fangs, which she planted into the side of his neck, the softest part, where the artery pulsed. Her victim jerked once, but was helpless.
The wolf in front of me barked out a growl and leapt to save his leader. I dived to intercept him, and Ben lunged with me. Together, we tackled him.
We didn’t even have to talk about it, and it seemed so natural, as if we stood side by side in the kitchen chopping vegetables for dinner. Throwing myself onto the animal’s back, I wrapped my fingers in the fur, forcing him to the ground, while Ben grabbed the head and wrenched in the opposite direction. The wolf squealed and flinched, but with weight holding him in two different directions, he couldn’t get the leverage to free himself. My Wolf thrilled, because we were hunting with our mate, as it should be.
The human body didn’t have the right tools to kill with bare hands. Human hands could strangle and break, but they couldn’t rip and tear like teeth and claws, which was the only way to kill properly, decisively. Spill the prey’s blood, let it soak the ground around you. I willed my claws to grow, to gain the power to break skin, and the power surged through me. Skin split under my touch as Wolf’s claws dug into my enemy’s gut, and blood and warmth spilled out.
A crack sounded—the wolf’s neck breaking, as Ben yanked his head even farther back. The animal fell still, but its heart still beat, its blood still flowed. My mate’s sharp claws slashed across its neck, and more blood spilled. Next our teeth would become fangs and we would bury our faces in our enemy’s corpse to feast.
Gasping for breath, I shoved away from the twitching body. We couldn’t afford this, we didn’t need this. We didn’t dare turn Wolf, so far from home and with no safe place to run or sleep when we were done. With silver knives lying on the floor. Keep it together, keep it together—
Inside me, Wolf howled. Blood filled her nose and she wanted to run. No, no, no, I murmured over and over, hugging my knees to my chest, squeezing my eyes shut, focusing on my human body. Fingers, not claws. I needed my fingers.
“Ben!” I called.
He looked up from the open wound he was digging in the wolf’s throat. His gaze was wild, his hazel eyes flecked with gold and amber. Blood streaked across his face.
“Stop, Ben,” I said. He stared a challenge at me, and his lip curled, showing teeth.
Cormac’s silver-inlaid knife lay on the floor where Anastasia had tossed it, within my reach. I grabbed it and stabbed it into the wolf’s belly, then scrambled away. Just touching the handle made my hand itch.
Ben also shoved himself away from the knife, backing on all fours, until he crumpled, folding over and hugging himself. The groan he let out was human.
“Ben?” I crept toward him, hesitant, waiting for the groan to turn to a growl, for his arms to take on a sheen of fur and start to melt into a wolf’s limbs. “Stay with me, Ben,” I murmured.
Blood covered our hands. I wanted to hang onto him, but slipped. He hunched over, his back heaving as he tried to catch his breath, as he tried to hold onto himself. I took hold of his face. He was injured from his fight with the wolf, claw slashes crossing his cheek, and a dark bruise colored his left eye.
He clenched his arms, trying to hold on. And his body didn’t break. He stayed human. I brushed my hand along his arm, smearing blood as I went. Human hands. I watched my own hands, making sure they stayed human. Finally, he turned his face to me, appearing exhausted but in control. I smiled weakly. If we’d been any closer to the full moon, we might not have been able to pull ourselves back.
I licked blood off his chin, moved up his cheek, bringing him back to himself, and back to me. Wolf to wolf, I spoke to him. He turned his face, and for a moment we shared breaths, which slowed as we calmed, and his arms closed around me—human arms with hands and fingers that clenched my shirt. I kissed him, and he sighed.
“Doing this twice in a day is too much,” he said, his voice rough. “Are we okay?”
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t want to look, but I did, in time to see Anastasia drop the bloodless corpse of the last werewolf. She stood and brushed off her clothing, arranging herself and regaining her poise. She hadn’t spilled a drop of blood. Unlike Ben and me, who were swimming in it.
Cormac stood behind her, stake in hand, raised and ready to strike.
He could take care of himself. He knew to stay out of the way—but now he saw a threat. His whole life had been about taking care of threats.
She ducked and swung, planting an elbow in Cormac’s gut and pivoting into the clear. Cormac’s swing went over her shoulder and missed. Grabbing his arm and using it for leverage, she slammed him into the floor. The stake skittered away from him. She stepped her nice sharp heel on his chest—and he punched her knee, wrenching the joint the wrong way. Grunting, she fell, and Cormac scrambled to his feet.
“Stop it!” I shouted. “Get away from each other and just … just stop it!” My voice had dropped—it sounded like a growl, a lupine snarl.
They stopped. Anastasia looked at me, eyebrows arced, lips pursed, as if she was amused that I would be giving orders. As usual, Cormac didn’t reveal anything in his expression—a cold gaze and a calm bearing hid any emotion. I could never guess what he was thinking.
The hallway smelled like blood. I couldn’t smell anything else. Not sweat, anxiety, incense, or anything. I paced, fast, back and forth across the hallway as if I could plunge through the walls to get some fresh air, to break free and run. I clenched my hands into fists, a growl stuck in my throat.
Ben put his hand around my ankle, and I stopped. He didn’t grab, didn’t force, didn’t squeeze. Just held me with a firm grip, and the touch warmed me, anchored me. Reminded me that I wasn’t alone. That we had to stay calm.
We had three dead bodies on the floor. Ben and I were covered with blood. It was congealing on my clothing and skin, getting sticky, itchy. I shivered inside my clothes, trying to better fit into my human skin. Sick of this place, I wanted to get my pack out of here. Ben stood and put his hand on my back, and I sighed, my muscles unclenching.
“Well,” I said finally. “Are we finished here? Now that we’ve built the set for our own B-grade horror flick?” I glanced at Cormac, hoping for some clue about what he thought of all this. Of me and Ben almost losing it and digging into a dying wolf with our bare hands.
His gaze was downturned as he went to the body of the werewolf Anastasia had killed. With his second knife, he cut off a big scrap of the man’s shirt and used it to retrieve the silver dagger from the now-human corpse that Ben and I had ravaged, with gaping wounds in its neck and belly. It was the man with the matted beard we’d seen earlier. The now frail-seeming body looked like an animal had been at it. He cleaned the knife, careful to scrape out all the cracks and seams where the blade joined the handle. Then he tossed the bloody cloth away. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t look at Ben and me.
It wasn’t like he’d never seen us covered in blood before.
Anastasia’s skin had taken on the warm, almost healthy sheen of the newly fed vampire. Quickly she crouched by her victim and searched, patting down his few pockets, feeling under his shirt for anything hidden. Nothing. Standing again, she hugged herself as if cold. “They must have already delivered it to him. It’s lost, it’s all lost. Roman’s won.”
It sure felt like it, but I couldn’t believe it. We were alive, which was a point in our favor. Grace was safe, I assumed, which was another point. This wasn’t over by a long shot.
I shook my head. “No. Something else is going on here. Maybe they locked up the nine-tails, but they don’t have the pearl—they were still looking for it. Which means Roman doesn’t have it. Someone else took it. There’s a third party.”
Ben chuckled. “That’s the good news, isn’t it?” He hunted around the floor for the gun he’d tossed aside, found it shored up against the wall, and covered in blood. Picking it up with two fingers by the very end of the grip, he said, “I’m really getting tired of this. Why’d I bring this again?” Cormac tossed him another scrap of shirt, and he started wiping it down. The scene was looking increasingly ghoulish. We needed to get out of here.
“Do we need to clean up the bodies?” Cormac asked.
“No,” Anastasia said. “The tunnels take care of themselves.”
Now I really wanted to get out of here. “Who else wants this pearl?” I said to the vampire.
“Anyone who knows about it would want it. Any magician, wizard, any other vampires. The gods.”
“Gods? Seriously? Let’s not make this more complicated than it has to be. What’s our next step then? Go looking for the pearl?”
“Take a shower?” Ben said. “Go home?”
“That gets my vote,” Cormac said. “This isn’t our fight.”
Anastasia didn’t say anything to that. I expected her to argue. She didn’t, maybe because Cormac was right. But that wasn’t how I felt. Roman was my enemy, too. Here or somewhere else, he’d come after me and mine again.
I tried to acquire some veneer of dignity despite the fact that I was still too close to turning Wolf for comfort. And that I was spattered with blood. Rounding my shoulders, I went the few steps down the hall to the closet with the safe. Both the room and the safe were still open.
I held myself still and began breathing softly, taking air through my nose, smelling the space and what had been here.
Mostly, I sensed what I expected: old stone and grime, a century’s worth of salt air lingering, the cold steel of the safe, smoke and wax from Grace’s candle. Werewolves, humans, and vampires. We’d been walking around on top of each other’s scents, which blurred together. I heard a distant pattering, like raindrops or the footsteps of mice, always at the edge of hearing. Mysterious gazes, always at the edge of seeing. I listened for the sound of a crying baby, and didn’t hear it. I hoped Grace was safe.
I knelt closer to the safe, putting my nose right up to the steel. A trace of Grace’s human scent lingered on the handle and combination dial. I even stuck my head inside the safe and took a few deep breaths, hoping to catch a trace of the artifact itself. I only smelled more steel, more dust. If I’d had to guess what had been here, I’d have said it had always been empty. Scary magical items should smell like something, shouldn’t they?
“Find anything?” Ben said.
I shook my head. “You want to try?”
I stepped aside and let him go through the same routine. After a moment of searching he muttered, “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”
“Let me,” Cormac said, moving toward us around the bodies. He carried the hurricane lamp and its golden halo of light from the storage room with him. We got out of the way and watched.
He took some kind of stone from his pocket, keeping it partially hidden in his hand. It had something magical to it, no doubt. Since his release from prison, he’d replaced his collection of guns with amulets and talismans.
If he was using magic, it meant Amelia was probably in charge now, which made me bristle. It didn’t matter if Cormac seemed all right with the arrangement. I didn’t like the idea of him being used.
He passed the amulet over the safe as if it were some kind of Geiger counter.
“What’s he doing?” Anastasia asked, moving next to me.
“He’s kind of a wizard, I guess,” I said.
“Kind of?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
She glared unhappily.
Straightening, Cormac pocketed the stone amulet. “Something magical was there but it’s gone now.”
“I don’t suppose it left a trail?” I asked. He shook his head.
“It’s a trap,” Anastasia said. “This has all been a trick, and I fell for it—”
“I’d just like to point out that we’re not the ones lying dead on the floor,” I said. “If this is a trap we’re not the only ones who got stuck.”
The silence drew on as we contemplated that unpleasant thought. Once again I started pacing, as if that would make the corridor larger, as if a way out would appear before my eyes. My shoes, coated with blood, started sticking to the floor. The stench of blood was making it hard for me to think.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “Find Grace and start over.”
We moved forward, back the way we’d come until we reached the intersection.
“Left,” Cormac said, before I could ask if anyone remembered which way we’d come.
“I knew that,” I muttered.
We turned and went on, strung out in single file in the narrow hallway, which my imagination was making narrower, and darker. This section seemed to go on a lot longer than I remembered.
“Aren’t there supposed to be stairs here?” I said. “I remember there being stairs.”
“Did we take a wrong turn back there?” Ben said.
“It wasn’t wrong,” Cormac said.
“But there were definitely stairs.”
Finally, we came to the next intersection. But this one didn’t branch off at right angles as the others had. Instead, the hallway split in a Y. It may have been my imagination, but the stone seemed to give way to dank earth, as if the passage left the city and continued on in wild, underground tunnels. I smelled dirt and mulch coming from the way ahead.
I stated the obvious. “We haven’t been here before.”
“So we took a wrong turn,” Ben said.
“This is much, much more than a wrong turn,” Anastasia said, her voice muted and anxious. She stood outside our small circle of light and her features were shadowed.
I faced her. “Do you know something or is that just more doom and gloom?”
Cormac said, “It’s that we can’t get out of here without Grace leading us. She’s got the key to the place. Until we find her, we’re stuck.”