Collection copyright © 2009

The Britlingens Go to Hell by Charlaine Harris

Batanya and Clovache were cleaning their armor in one of the courtyards of the Britlingen Collective, which sits atop a hill in the ancient city of Spauling. It was a fine summer day, and they sat on benches that they’d positioned to catch the sun.

“I’m as pale as a pooka belly,” Clovache said.

“Not quite,” Batanya said, after looking at Clovache rather seriously. Batanya was the older of the two; she was twenty-eight to Clovache’s twenty-four. Batanya was pale, too, since she spent most of her time in armor of one kind or another, but that didn’t bother Batanya.

“Oh, thank you. Not quite,” Clovache said, imitating Batanya’s husky voice. It was a pretty bad imitation. Batanya smiled. She and Clovache had worked together for five years, and there wasn’t much they didn’t know about each other. They had both done most of their growing up within the Collective walls.

“You are a bit like a pooka, though. Your hair is the same color as the back fur, and you like the night life better than the daylight. But I’m sure you wouldn’t taste as good deep-fried.”

Clovache stretched out a foot to kick Batanya, very lightly. “We’ll go out to eat later,” she said. “How about Pooka Palace?”

Batanya nodded. “Unless Trovis is there. If he’s in the place, I’m leaving.”

The two women worked in a friendly silence for a few minutes. They were polishing what they called their “liquid armor,” the most popular single item of body defense in the Britlingen’s huge collection. Liquid armor wasn’t really liquid. It resembled a wet suit more than anything, but it was considerably easier to don. There was a keypad the size of a credit card on the chest. It allowed for communication with anyone else wearing a similar suit, and it had a personal sequence programmed into it that allowed only one wearer to use the armor. The material would toughen when the sequence was pressed in, to allow the wearer to be almost invulnerable; without this procedure, the armor was ineffective. The protocol had been added to prevent the armor from being stolen. Before the code had been added, a few Britlingens had been murdered for their armor. It was used in cooler weather. The two women had already cleaned their summer-weight gear.

Batanya had turned her suit inside out and was cleaning the inner surface with a pleasant-scented solvent from a large green pot. Clovache was using the all-purpose cleaner on the hardened pieces that could be strapped on over the liquid armor.

Clovache threw a finished piece down on the towel she’d spread on the ground and picked up another one. “Hard drill this morning,” she observed.

“Trovis was not in a good mood,” Batanya said.

“And why would that be?” Clovache asked, trying to sound innocent.

Batanya flushed a little, causing the scar that ran across her right cheek to stand out. Clovache had heard people tease Batanya about the scar, but they only did it once. “He tried to jump me in the bathroom last night. I had to give him an elbow to the gut. Trovis is making a fool of himself.”

Clovache agreed. “If he’s trying to show you who’s boss, he is a fool,” she said. “And if he keeps it up, I shall go to Flechette and put it to her that Trovis should be removed from his command.”

“That would make Trovis crazy, which is a good thing,” Batanya said. “But it would make us look weak.”

Clovache looked startled, but after a moment, she nodded. “I understand. We should be able to eat whatever Trovis puts on the table.” She tested the strength of a strap. “If worse comes to worst, perhaps he’ll have an accident.”

“Hush your mouth,” Batanya said, genuinely shocked. “After all-”

“Britlingens don’t kill Britlingens,” Clovache said dutifully. “We leave that to the rest of the world.”

That was the first lesson a novice learned when he or she came to the fortress.

“There are exceptions,” Clovache said stubbornly as she gathered up her armor. “And his obsession with you provides one.”

“Not for you to say.” Batanya stood, the sheet containing all her paraphernalia draped over one shoulder. “I’ll meet you at the gate in a couple of hours?”

“Surely,” her junior said.

Later that same afternoon, the two bodyguards strolled down to the Pooka Palace. Batanya grumbled about the narrow streets and their ancient cobblestones, which made it very impractical to keep a hovercraft at the castle. This was a source of grief to Batanya, who loved to drive fast.

Pooka Palace had opened its outside section in honor of the balmy weather. The place was full of familiar faces from the Collective. Though Britlingens had the run of the city, they tended to linger close to the hilltop castle. Naturally, the shops that clustered in the winding old streets around the base of the hill were mostly dedicated to serving the bodyguards and assassins who lived in the ancient castle. There were a lot of storefronts that advertised repair services, either of armor or of arms. There were magic shops filled with arcane items the witches of the Collective might need or want. There were dark-fronted shops filled with bits of machinery that the mechs found intriguing. There were at least a score of bars and restaurants, but Pooka Palace was Clovache’s favorite.

Waiting at a fairly clean table was a friend of theirs named Geit, a broad-shouldered and genial man who could swing a sword with enough force to take off a head with one lop. He was an assassin; though Clovache and Batanya were in the bodyguard division, they didn’t discriminate in their friendships as some did.

Geit had already ordered baskets of fried pooka and fish, and they’d just toasted with three tankards of ale when they saw a child from the castle approaching, wearing the red vest of a messenger. Though walking quickly, the boy was also playing with a conjuring ball; it was clearly a cheap one, but the ball was still charged with enough magic to keep it in the air for a few seconds each time he tossed it up. The child interrupted his play to scan the faces at the tables. He spotted them and trotted over.

“Lady Warrior, excuse me,” said the child, bowing. “Are you Senior Batanya?”

“I am, squirt,” Batanya said. She drained her mug of ale. “Who needs what?”

“Commander Trovis has, ah, requested, that you and your junior come up to the fortress immediately, to the Hall of Contracts.”

Geit whistled. “But you just got back from a job. Why would Trovis send you out again?”

“After the last one, I’d hoped we’d rest longer,” Batanya said. “Getting out of that hotel was no fun, especially carrying a client who would burn up in sunlight. Well, we must go, Geit. Have a drink on us.” After hastily finishing their baskets of food (a Britlingen never passes up a chance to eat), she paid the bar tab and looked away as Clovache gave Geit a quick kiss on the cheek. The two women followed the child back up the winding streets to the gate of the Collective. The guards on duty recognized them and nodded to indicate they could reenter without the usual search.

The Hall of Contracts was conveniently close to the witches’ and mechs’ wing, since witchcraft (enhanced by science) provided the transportation to at least fifty percent of the missions. In fact, Batanya couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone overland to a job.

The hall itself didn’t look important. It was a just a large room, one wall of which was decorated with some indifferent paintings. This was called the Wall of Shame; the art hung there depicted employees of the Collective who had screwed up in some notable way. (The Britlingen instruction model was heavily weighted toward learning by the mistakes of one’s predecessors.) Aside from the paintings and some benches, there was only a table with a few chairs, a large lightsource, and some writing instruments.

Trovis was leaning back in one of the wooden chairs, his feet propped on the table. This was inappropriate behavior for the Hall of Contracts, for these contracts were the lifeblood of the Collective. Signing each contract was an important moment. Not only was this the main source of income for the Collective, but each contract might bring about the death of the Britlingens charged with fulfilling it.

“His promotion’s gone to his head,” Clovache muttered. “He wouldn’t have dared behave so a halfyear ago.”

The child scampered off once he’d gotten his tip, and Batanya and Clovache advanced to the table. One of the senior commanders, Flechette, entered from a side door, and since she had a staff in her hands, she used it to sweep Trovis’s legs to the side, neatly knocking him out of his chair.

“Respect for the room,” she said harshly, as Trovis scrambled to right himself. The two bodyguards kept their faces absolutely blank, which took a lot of effort. Flechette paid no attention to the lower-ranked Trovis’s shock and anger, but threw herself into one of the chairs. Despite Flechette’s apparent age-she looked at least sixty, which few Britlingens attained-she moved like a much younger woman. “You’ve summoned us,” Flechette said. “What have you, Sergeant?”

Trovis collected himself. If he’d had a weapon, perhaps he would have drawn on his superior, but he’d come to the hall unarmed-an unusual circumstance for a Britlingen, even as poor a Britlingen as Trovis. “This customer has come in person,” he said, biting off his words. He gestured toward a man standing at the rear of the hall, apparently examining one of the paintings-the one of Johanson the Fool, Batanya noted. She was trying to avoid meeting Trovis’s eyes.

“What happened to this fellow?” asked a light voice, and the stranger turned to look at them inquiringly. He was a couple of inches taller than Batanya, who was of medium height for a woman. The stranger was lightly built, and fair, and wearing clothes that signaled he was from the city-state of Pardua, which lay about two hours’ drive from Spauling. Batanya had visited there on business several times. In Pardua, poor vision was corrected by brilliantly colored and decorated goggles, and the stranger wore a striking pair: a shrieking blue, spotted with artificial purple stones. They made him look remarkably silly.

Since no one else spoke, Batanya said, “Johanson the Fool walked his client into an ambush. When it was over, he and his client were as full of darts as a pincushion has pins.”

“I don’t know what a pincushion is, but I take your meaning,” the stranger said. He cast another look at the grisly picture. “I am here to hire two Britlingens as bodyguards. I don’t want to end up like Johanson’s client.” He shuddered elaborately.

“Very well,” said Flechette. “You understand, clients don’t actually show up at the Collective very often. Usually the contract is negotiated on the witchweb.”

“Is that right? I’m sorry I broke with proper procedure.” The blond dandy minced over to the table. “I happened to be in Spauling and thought I’d come directly to the source. See what I was getting, in other words.”

“You would be getting Clovache and her senior, Batanya,” Trovis said, smiling broadly. “After he described the job, Commander Flechette, I knew they would be perfect.”

“Why?” Flechette said. She had little use for Trovis, and she’d never hidden her opinion. After Batanya and Trovis had both been out of commission following a previous set-to, Flechette had begun watching the man like a hawk.

“They protected their last client under circumstances that no one foresaw,” Trovis said, his voice silky. “Who could not be impressed by their performance? I am sure they can handle this.”

Flechette eyed Trovis before turning her attention to the client. “What is your goal, stranger? And your name, incidentally.”

“I’m so sorry! My name is Crick. And I need to retrieve something of mine that I lost in a rather dangerous place.”

Bodyguards go into tense situations all the time (especially ones of Batanya and Clovache’s caliber), so it wasn’t the word “dangerous” that bothered Batanya: it was the bullshit detector shrilling in her brain. She looked at Clovache, who nodded grimly. Crick was not telling all the truth, certainly; and he was not the silly, rather effeminate Parduan he portrayed himself to be. The oblivious Trovis wouldn’t have spotted the excellent muscle tone in the slender body. The bodyguards had. But clients lied all the time, didn’t they? Batanya shrugged: what could you do? Clovache nodded again: nothing.

Trovis and Flechette went over the basic contract with the Parduan. It covered the price of transference by witchweb to the site the client chose. It covered the directive of the mission-to get Crick and his property back in one piece. It contained the standard insurance clause, so the treatment of any injuries the bodyguards sustained would be paid for by the client.

Batanya and Clovache paid attention, because that was part of the deal. All bodyguards had to be aware of what they’d agreed to do, and what they hadn’t. Though the two had stood in the Hall of Contracts dozens of times and listened to exactly the same discussion, this preparation was as much part of the work as getting their weapons ready. No deniability on this job.

At last the prolonged contract session was over. Since Crick was a first-time customer of the Britlingen Collective, it had taken a bit longer than usual. Batanya noticed that Crick had asked some very shrewd questions.

“Will you sign?” Flechette asked formally, when Crick declared himself satisfied.

Crick picked up the pen and signed the contract.

“The client has agreed. Will you sign, senior?” Flechette asked Batanya. She sighed, but she picked up the pen and scribbled her name.

“You, junior?” Clovache followed suit.

“Now what?” Crick asked brightly.

“We withdraw, you give your bodyguards your place of destination, and they fetch the appropriate gear. They meet you here, then you go to the witchwing through that door. The witches and the mechs take over the transportation.” Trovis was bored now, and showing it. He hadn’t found an excuse to provoke anyone into a fight, the client had the money and had paid the asking price, and furthermore Trovis had arranged to rid himself of his most irritating subordinates for at least a few days-possibly permanently. There was nothing more to be wrung from the situation. He took the earliest opportunity to slip out of the room, if a rather solid man six feet tall can “slip” anywhere.

“Where’s he slinking off to?” Clovache muttered.

“Some quiet spot where he can think of some other way to make me miserable,” Batanya answered, and then was sorry she’d spoken. She hoped Flechette hadn’t heard. Going over the head of one’s superior officer to complain to a higher rank was not admired among the members of the Britlingen Collective.

But Flechette seemed intent on observing the courtesies required by her position as commander: she wished the client a successful journey, clapped Clovache on the shoulder and shook Batanya’s hand, and advised them to eat before they left… her standard farewell. Then she drew herself up, gave the Britlingen salute, and said, “What is the law?”

“The client’s word,” Batanya said smartly. Clovache was a beat behind her.

Crick was watching, his eyes intent behind the ridiculous goggles. When Flechette had left, the two bodyguards drew closer to him.

“What temperature should we pack for?” Clovache asked. “What kind of fighting?”

Crick had been listening while the contract was explained, but nonetheless he asked, “You can’t tell anyone what I say; is that right?”

Batanya nodded. Clovache just looked resigned.

“To Hell,” Crick said. “We’re going to Hell.”

After a long moment of silence, Clovache said, “We’ll need our summer armor, then.”

“What happened was this,” Crick said, suddenly chatty. He’d taken a seat at the table, and Clovache and Batanya followed suit. “I obtained a certain item from the King of Hell, and I misplaced it when I had to leave. I definitely didn’t enjoy my stay with the king, and I’m afraid my abrupt departure may have angered him. As you may have deduced, I need to avoid Lucifer. I very much need to avoid him. I must get in and out of Hell as quietly as possible. Since I can’t look in every direction at once, I hired you two to help me watch.”

“So you’re a thief.” Batanya was entering a list of things she needed to take, using her wrist communicator. She glanced up long enough to make sure he was listening.

“Ah, yes. But a thief with a cause,” Crick added brightly.

“Don’t care,” Batanya said. “No matter what you are, no matter what your cause or motivation, we’ll do what we’ve been hired to do.” She looked him square in the eyes.

“Then we’re all fine,” Crick said, in his most foolish voice. One of the castle cats wandered in and leaped into his lap. He stroked its long orange fur. Batanya eyed it indifferently. She’d never been one for pets, though cats were at least preferable to dogs.

Anything was preferable to dogs.

“How long do you expect we’ll be gone?” Clovache asked Crick.

“If we’re not back in two weeks, we’re not coming back,” Crick said with a pleasant smile. “That would be my best evaluation.”

Batanya remembered that Clovache had tickets to a concert in a week’s time.

“Can you turn those tickets in?” Batanya asked. She ran her fingers through her short, inky hair.

“Nonrefundable,” Clovache said gloomily. “Oh, well.” She rose to her feet. “Senior,” she said, her voice formal, “I ask leave to go prepare.”

“I’ll be there in a minute myself,” Batanya said. “Go ahead.” She eyed their client narrowly. As soon as Clovache had gone, Batanya said, “I know there’s much you’re not telling us. No client ever tells us the whole story. You always lie. But if there’s some word you could speak that would help us prepare to guard you, now is the time to speak that word.”

Crick looked down at the table for a long moment. The cat jumped out of his lap and left by a window. “Nothing,” he said. “There’s nothing else I can tell you now that will be of any assistance.”

“All right then,” she said grimly. “You’ve got two of Britlingen’s best protecting you, Crick. I hope you appreciate that.”

“I am paying well for the service,” he said. His voice was cool.

Batanya might have told him that no amount of money could make up for the loss of their lives, but that wouldn’t have been true. The Britlingen Collective had put a price on that, and Crick had paid it.

“I’ll return shortly,” she said, and rose to her feet. “The witches and mechs will be ready by then, too.” She saw, with a grim satisfaction, that the mention of the witches made Crick shiver. Witches gave everyone the creeps.

Standing in the middle of her little room, Batanya hauled her backpack from the footlocker. She checked her wrist communicator. It showed her the list she’d made-not in written words, but in symbols. Some of the weapons she often carried would be useless in Hell. Any fray would take place suddenly and at close quarters, almost certainly, so taking some of the missile-firing guns would be useless, as would any of the weapons relying on sun power. Hell was underground in a vast network of intersecting tunnels.

“Batanya,” called Clovache, whose room was across the hall, “What about crossbows?” The wrist crossbows were incredibly powerful and ranked at the top of Clovache’s list of favorite devices.

“Do they kill demons?” Batanya called back. “I don’t think so. I think we should take the…” What did kill a demon? The bespelled throwing stars, of course. “The throwing stars,” she called. Steel? Silver? What else would be useful?

She went over all the armaments in her head as she pulled on her summer armor, which was a very lightweight porous fabric spun by spiderlike creatures from Moraeus. The summer version was like wearing chain mail all over, though it had the texture and appearance of cloth. It was even more expensive and harder to find than liquid armor. The Britlingen company store sold it at what they said was cost-but Batanya had had to save for two years to purchase it. She’d loaned Clovache the money to buy her own summer armor during Clovache’s first year as Batanya’s junior. “Damn Collective,” Batanya muttered as she put the few extra things she’d need into the prepared waterproof backpack that all Britlingens carried on their travels. It was always stocked with a few microthin clean garments, compressed cooked food that could be eaten on the run, a pill or two that provided bursts of energy and had to be used judiciously, some bandages and antibiotics, and a bottle of water. To forestall other kinds of emergencies, all the Britlingens, male and female, were injected with birth control drugs on a monthly basis. Those who skipped this injection were listed in bright red chalk on a big board in the entrance hall.

“Got your list?” she asked from Clovache’s doorway. “Oh, have you checked your pocket?” Batanya had already touched her tongue to the artificial pouch in her right cheek, and she nodded when Clovache’s right hand flew to her left armpit. Clovache nodded in confirmation and then burrowed back into her closet.

“Yes, I just need to write Geit a note.” Clovache’s voice was muffled. She was probably searching for some paper and a pen, items Clovache didn’t need too often.

“Are you and Geit knocking armor?”

“Yes. He’s very vigorous.”

Smiling, Batanya shook her head, though Clovache couldn’t see her. “You’d do better to keep Geit as a friend,” she said. “But I guess it’s too late for that.”

Her junior reemerged. “He will be. I always stay friends with my lovers. It’s my gift.” Clovache’s light brown hair stuck up in spikes all over her head. She hadn’t pulled on the armor’s hood yet. It was her least favorite piece of protection. Batanya was none too fond of it either, though her own close-clipped curly black hair lay so close to her skull she might as well have been wearing the hood already.

Together, checking and rechecking their equipment, the two bodyguards went down the list. Traveling very light made careful preparation even more crucial. The older warrior noticed that Clovache had slipped the frame of her wrist crossbow into the special compartment on the outside of the pack, and she kept her mouth shut. If it made Clovache feel stronger, the slight extra weight was worth it.

At last the two decided they were ready, and they walked out of the dormitory. Neither Batanya nor Clovache bothered to lock their doors behind them. Theft was a rare occurrence in the castle. It was punishable by death. Of course, unlocked doors made elaborate practical jokes very easy to stage. Batanya touched the scar on her cheek.

Their employer was waiting in the Hall of Contracts, just as he’d been bid. Batanya gave the Parduan a sharp nod to indicate they were ready to go. Crick stood, brushed the wrinkles out of his outer tunic, and said, “I suppose now we meet the witches and the mechs?”

“Yes,” Clovache said. “No way around it, Crick.”

He looked startled for a brief moment. “It shows, then.”

Batanya snorted.

“That would be a yes, I take it. Well, well. Where do we go?”

“This door.” It was heavy Moraeus wood and banded with metal. There were runes and other symbols from several magical systems incised in the stone all around the door and carved into the door itself. If the Britlingen Collective were destroyed at that moment, Batanya reckoned the Hall of Witchcraft and all within it would remain standing.

She knocked on the door, the pattern of a bodyguard, four evenly spaced knocks. After a moment, it swung open, and the three walked through, falling into the pattern they would assume for the journey: Batanya in front, her eyes moving from side to side, Crick following, and then Clovache, whose task was to keep her face forward but her ears behind-a tricky thing to do, but that was the traditional job of the junior.

The door swung shut behind them, and they were faced with a veiled man in white robes. His glistening silver hair trailed almost to the floor.

Fucking witches, Batanya thought. Always posing.

“We come for transportation,” she said, though of course the witch already knew that. But she had to adhere to the ritual. The witches and the mechs went nuts if the rituals weren’t followed.

“We’re ready,” said the witch, who appeared to be smiling behind the veil. “So few want to be sent to Hell. We’ve enjoyed the preparations.” That was an unexpected bit of sharing; Clovache was almost inclined to think not too badly of him, when the witch added, “Of course, we’ve never gotten to bring anyone back.”

“Which room?” Batanya asked, her voice quite level.

He inclined his head toward the doorway behind him and turned to glide into the huge room ahead of them. He moved with an eerie smoothness. Batanya and Clovache had wondered between themselves if the witches practiced moving like that. They had entertained the whole bar at the Pooka Palace one night by acting out the Floating Walk 101 class. Batanya turned to exchange a weak grin with Clovache. That had been a very good night.

In the middle of the room was a shallow basin raised on a plinth, and in the basin was a smoky fire. A group of seven witches stood in a casual circle around the basin, and they all seemed prepared with small vials of herbs or chemicals, and a number of focus items. The children taken in by the Collective came in handy for the witches’ rituals, too. At the side of each witch was a boy or girl of ages ranging from fourteen to five. Each child held a cloudy globe.

In the corner of the room, a lone mech was seated on a stool before a vast and complex machine. Batanya saw her client’s shoulders jump a little. The Parduan was wound pretty tight, and she hoped he didn’t come unsprung. What would she do if he withdrew a weapon from his clothing and tried to kill the witches? Hmmm, that was a poser. The client’s wish was law, right? But the witches were under the protection of the Collective; in fact, they were an essential part of the Collective’s operation. The scenario presented a neat problem to debate over many tankards of ale when they returned… if they returned.

Batanya turned to the client and pointed to a little set of steps that led to a platform over the basin. “Up,” she said, and went up herself ahead of him. The three crowded onto the small platform, and the two bodyguards put their arms around Crick, which made him jump yet again. “A Crick sandwich,” he muttered foolishly, and over his shoulder Clovache rolled her eyes at Batanya, who sighed.

Then the witches began their chanting, their drawing of runes in the air, and their tossing of herbs on the fire, and the smoke began to rise, and the mech in the corner began his mysterious button punching on the machine, and then…

They were in Hell.

Of course, it was hot in the tunnel. The smell was most unpleasant. Hell had been named from the stories from Earth, and its atmosphere was not the only similarity that had spawned the comparison. Life on the surface above Hell was almost impossible because of the pools of gases that dotted the landscape. The beings that still lived aboveground were savage and very foreign. Down below, where the being named Lucifer ruled, was where almost all Hell’s life was conducted. Its curved tunnels were notoriously dangerous and difficult to navigate.

Crick had a map, which he whipped out of a pocket in his tunic. The map was made from a very flexible material, and he held the unfolded surface wide open to peer at it, angling the face of the map toward the arched roof. That was where the tunnel’s lightsource originated, though Clovache couldn’t identify the devices that issued the light, or how those devices were powered. They’d found themselves in a main passage; Clovache noticed that other branch tunnel mouths within view were much darker and smaller. For the moment, the three were alone, but there was a clear sound of footsteps from the west. It was the work of a moment for Batanya to drag Crick backward into one of the dark tunnels, though the rock floor was so inexplicably slick that she almost landed on her back. Clovache leaped after her and skidded so hard she almost hit the wall. Crick still had his map spread in his hands, and he squawked, but it was through Batanya’s fingers.

The two Britlingens pressed their client up against the stone wall of the tunnel, their bodies between the opening and Crick. Crick was very quiet now, having grasped the situation, and Batanya thought it safe to remove her hand. She eased a throwing star out of its sheath and held it at the ready.

Two demons walked past the mouth. They were perhaps five feet tall, red and bumpy, and though they had two arms and two legs, that was the end of their resemblance to humans. They did have cloven hooves and tails, and sharp pointed ears, but they were hairless and their genitals were barbed, whether they were male or female. Batanya saw Crick’s eyes lock onto the crucial area, and she shared his wince. No matter how many times you had seen the demons strut their stuff, it was awful to imagine that “stuff” in operation.

The demons passed out of view without detecting their presence.

All three of them exhaled with relief, and Batanya put the star away.

“Let’s just stay here for a moment,” she whispered. “Tell us what your plan is.” When Batanya made a suggestion in that particular voice, even if she had to whisper it, wise people listened, and Crick was at least that wise.

“All right,” Crick said, just as quietly. He extracted something from one of his pockets-his garment seemed to have a hundred of them-and pressed a button. It was a tiny lightsource, probably battery powered, and he turned so that his body was between the light and the mouth of their tunnel. He handed the map to Batanya. Clovache squatted right beside him to add her body to the screen, and they all peered down at the map.

It was detailed, showing tunnel after tunnel, chamber after chamber. “How’d you get this?” Clovache said, her voice hushed and respectful. This was a valuable item.

“You don’t want to know,” Crick said, his tenor voice cheerful. “You really don’t.” His long, thin finger moved over the markings on the map for a moment, and then he said, “Here we are.” There was a pulsing star at the spot he indicated.

“Too bad the other critters don’t show up the way we do,” Batanya muttered. “But at least we have a frame of reference.”

“I couldn’t afford the kind that shows all life-forms,” Crick said apologetically.

“What, you actually paid for this?” Clovache’s eyebrows were raised skeptically. She clearly thought he’d stolen it.

“Well, no. I mean I couldn’t afford the jail time. The better ones were locked up tighter, and I was in a hurry,” he said, without the slightest trace of shame.

“What is this object of yours that you ‘left behind’ the last time you visited this place?” Batanya said.

“It’s a conjuring ball.”

“But those are everywhere, you can buy one in any shop.”

“Not like this one. It’s for real.”

The two Britlingens stared at their client. Conjuring balls, full of tiny machinery and spells and capable of performing very innocuous bits of magic like lighting candles or drying plates, were hugely popular gifts for children. Even a cheap one could entertain a child for hours until the magic ran down, and the more expensive models were almost as good as giving someone a pet. They might last two or three years, and could do quite a variety of tasks and tricks. But everyone knew that the balls were not permanent sources of magic. Sooner or later, they’d exhaust their power.

“You’re telling us this conjuring ball is eternal?” Clovache said, her voice almost a growl.

“Yes.” Crick looked rather proud.

“Did you make it?”

“No, of course not. I stole it on commission.”

“You mean you stole it from the Lord of Hell because someone had asked you to get it?”

Crick nodded, looking pleased with her acumen.

“Who?” Batanya had a creeping feeling along her arms. This was getting worse and worse. “Who commissioned the theft?”

“Belshazzar.”

“And you went back to Pardua without the ball? Having taken his money?”

“Taken it and spent it,” Crick said, his foolish face looking rather downcast.

“We are so fucked,” Clovache said.

There was a moment of silence while they all considered the truth of this. Belshazzar, a warlord of Pardua, was actually a glorified gangster. (Perhaps all warlords are.) Belshazzar was ruthless, drastic, and notoriously indirect in his punishments. He would enjoy amputating your hand if you stole from him, but he enjoyed even more kidnapping your mother, say, and forcing you to watch as he amputated her hand. Then yours.

“Hey, we’re Britlingens,” Batanya said bracingly. “Not only are we made of tough stuff, but we can hardly be blamed for what our client has done. Britlingens are hired hands, not the responsible parties.”

“True,” Clovache said. “Our Collective would intervene, if they had any notion of where we were. Trovis wouldn’t pay ransom for us, but Flechette might. I’m not so very partial to my left hand, anyway. And maybe we can buy some time by persuading Belshazzar to kill Crick here, first.”

“Thanks, bodyguards-sworn-to-protect-me,” said Crick, somewhat coldly, “but let’s leave the discussion of my possible demise for later. Right now, we’ve got a conjuring ball to retrieve.”

“Did you hide it or was it captured?” Batanya asked.

“I hid it,” Crick said. “I seized a moment of solitude.”

“Where?”

He peered at the map. “Here,” he said, and indicated a tunnel to the north of the one where they crouched. There was a fair amount of walking in between.

“If you had given the witches this map, they could have landed us right there,” Clovache muttered.

“Yes, but then we would have landed in the barracks. So that seemed like a poor choice to me.”

“You hid the ball in the barracks of the soldiers of the King of Hell?”

He shrugged. “It was where I was.”

“How’d… No. Let’s focus. Unless you have a better idea, we’ll work our way closer and see what our chances are.” It was obvious from Batanya’s tone that she considered those chances slim to nil. “Lucky for you I don’t have children, Crick, or I’d be cursing you in their names.”

“Oh my goodness, that’s hard to believe,” Crick said blandly. “That you don’t have children, I mean. What could the men of Spauling be thinking of?”

“Slitting your throat, most likely,” Batanya said. “I know that’s crossed my mind.”

“What is the law?” Crick didn’t sound at all worried.

“The client’s word,” Clovache said, but Batanya could tell it hurt her to say it.

“Let’s get moving. Stop the jawing.” Batanya wanted to correct Clovache’s attitude. That was her job.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Clovache muttered, by way of apology. “This is a very bad mission.”

In a few seconds, Clovache’s dark outlook was validated. Just as they were edging forward to take a gander out the mouth of their tunnel, they heard something moving in the darkness behind them.

It was something that was dragging itself along.

“It’s a slug,” Crick said urgently. “We must move now or be stuck to the tunnel walls in a coat of slug goo. Or we’ll be absorbed.”

They hadn’t the faintest idea what Crick was talking about, but he’d been there before and they hadn’t. Also, the smell that preceded the dragging sound was strong enough to make even the hardened bodyguards gag. Batanya checked to make sure the passage was clear, and the three darted out into the main tunnel, turning left; Batanya figured that was north. They left the dragging noise and the awful smell behind them, so evidently the slugs didn’t move very swiftly. But after a few minutes, Batanya heard footsteps coming at a fast clip. At her hand gesture, the three leaped into a very small side tunnel, much narrower than the one that had been their first refuge.

This tunnel turned out to be occupied by three soldiers doing the nasty, and in this instance that was no euphemism. Since they were from different species, this was an unattractive and complicated undertaking. Before Crick’s involuntary sound of disgust had cleared his throat, before Clovache had quite figured out how they’d all hooked up, Batanya had silenced the soldiers permanently with her short sword.

It was hard to say in the dim lighting that was only a step above darkness, but Batanya, cleaning her sword on the trousers of one deceased soldier, felt Crick might even look a bit green.

“Thank you,” he said, after a moment.

“Don’t mention it,” she said.

They crouched in the gloom with the corpses, Clovache glancing at the bodies from time to time in curiosity. “Have you ever seen that?” she asked Batanya, pointing to the conjunction of a greenish brown snake-headed humanoid creature and a wolfwoman. Batanya shook her head. “This job is always an education,” she said.

After a few minutes, it seemed apparent no one had heard the muted groans and gurgles of the dying soldiers; or perhaps if any passerby had, the noises had been perceived as arising from their activity. At any rate, no one came to investigate.

Batanya knew it was only a matter of time before they came face-to-face with someone who would challenge them. The traffic in the tunnel made it obvious that they were getting closer to the hub of Hell’s activities. Several times various beings passed the mouth of their little hidey-hole, and each time the three held their breath until the footsteps had passed (if the creatures had feet). One of the slugs oozed by, and Clovache and Batanya got to observe firsthand how the creatures undulated through the tunnels, the slime oozing from their underbellies and sides to grease their passage. This slime hardened within seconds. Now Clovache understood why the floor of the tunnel was so smooth and even; the passage of the slugs, the largest of which was perhaps ten feet long and as big around as a medium barrel, had led to a gradual buildup of the substance. There was a coating on the bottom half of the walls, too, but it wasn’t as thick and glassy as the layer on the floor.

“If we’d known, we could have brought metal cleats,” Batanya said practically. “Perhaps someone should have told us.”

Crick was wise enough to keep his response to himself. He just grinned at Batanya in a foolish way. “There’ll be less traffic at nighttime,” he whispered. “We’ll have to wait it out.”

Some hours passed, and the activity in the tunnels died down. The three spent the passing time trying to ignore the smell of both the heaped bodies and the dark area beyond them at the end of the tunnel, perhaps five yards farther. The area had evidently been used as a latrine in the recent past, and though the functional amenity was handy, it was also unpleasant to be around for any length of time-and all they had was lengthy time. Very lengthy. The two Britlingens dozed, ate a couple of energy bars, gave Crick another, and drank sparingly. Presumably there were underground springs somewhere; almost all living beings needed fluid. But they hadn’t seen one, and the map showed only the tunnels.

“At least we haven’t seen any animals,” Clovache said in a bright whisper. “I wonder how they supply themselves with meat?”

“There are pens of cows and other edible creatures, kept pretty far distant from the rest of Lucifer’s palace,” Crick said. “Why are you glad we haven’t seen animals?”

“They might bark,” Clovache said quickly. In the dim light that pervaded the tunnels, which varied quite a bit from one tunnel to the next, she looked as if she wished she hadn’t spoken.

Crick looked curious, which was probably his natural condition. “You wanted to avoid dogs in particular?” he said. “Why?”

There was an awful moment of silence.

“Because this large scar on my face was caused by a dog. I got it on my first mission,” Batanya said, with no inflection at all. “We were protecting a guy who bred attack dogs. His breeding and training methods were famous. A rival of his, as a practical joke, bribed one of our client’s kennel boys to feed the dogs an irritant that acted on their nervous system.”

“How did that turn out?”

Batanya shrugged and looked away.

“Not very well,” Clovache said. “I hadn’t finished training. A man named Damon was Batanya’s junior. This alleged practical joke cost him his life.”

“Did your client live?” Crick asked Batanya directly.

She met his eyes. “Yes,” she said. “He lived, though he lost a leg and one hand. Damon died after four hours. I got the scar.”

That was end of all conversation for a long time.

Batanya gradually became convinced that it was night. It was hard to tell with no change in the light, but it felt like night to her. She gave Clovache a hand signal. After a quick check of all their accoutrements, the bodyguards prepared to move. According to the legend on Crick’s handy-dandy map, they were about a mile from their objective as a crow flies, if a crow would be demented enough to navigate the tunnels of Hell.

Clovache glared at the map, which in some ways was a godsend, in other ways completely useless. Fumbling their way ignorantly would have been nearly suicidal, but the map would have been so much more valuable if it had shown the rooms that must be lying somewhere. Presumably, in this huge underground empire, there was a throne room for the king, a refectory of some kind, a prison, an audience chamber, and so on. As it was, they knew where they had to go in order to retrieve Crick’s left-behind treasure, but they had no idea what they might encounter on the way there.

“It’s not like we ever knew what to expect anyway,” Clovache said to Batanya, who nodded. They’d been partners long enough to have abbreviated conversations.

As if her words had been a self-fulfilling prophecy, they rounded the next bend to find two armed guards blocking the way.

“We heard you coming a mile away,” said the one who was least humanoid. He was a not a demon. In fact, Batanya had no idea what his origin was. He was quadrupedal, gray, and clothed in a material like cobwebs. He had a device in his hand that looked like the frame for a tennis racket. With a dexterous motion, he swung the thing toward them, and a large-weave net flowed out of the frame to land over Batanya and Crick, who was right behind her.

Clovache fled, rightly figuring that someone needed to stay free. To the hoots and jeers of the two guards, Batanya unsheathed her short sword and began sweeping the blade from side to side. To her vast irritation, the strands of the net stuck to the sword and moved with it. The net was so elastic that it didn’t provide enough resistance to be severed.

“Shit!” she said. From the corner of her eye she saw that Crick had adapted and was working with his dagger. He was having better luck with his smaller blade than she was with her sword, so she pulled out her own knife and began cutting. The second guard, a human who looked quite a bit like Trovis, had drawn some kind of handgun, a hazardous decision in a rock tunnel. Since a ricochet was just as likely to wound her or her client as it was to hit the one who deserved it, Batanya threw her dagger through a rent she’d just made in the net and killed the Trovis-like human, who gurgled dramatically before he crumpled to the floor of the tunnel. There was a certain flash of satisfaction in the moment.

The net-thrower seemed startled that things weren’t going his way, and he wasn’t keeping the net mended quickly enough to contain Crick and Batanya. Crick was working very quickly, which was good, since Batanya had been forced to return to using her sword. She’d changed her technique to the more effective one of stabbing through the net in short jabs, rather than trying to sweep a large cut through the strands.

Batanya was startled to see something long and dark slide past her on the tunnel floor. By the time she realized it was Clovache, the other woman was on her feet and plunging her neotaser into the mass of the net-throwing thing’s body. A good jolt of electricity will interrupt almost any being’s thought processes, and it had a dramatic effect on their gray enemy. All four legs shot out and began skidding around on the slippery surface of the tunnel. The effect was weirdly like dancing, but when Clovache delivered another jolt, it became evident that the creature was in its death throes. It collapsed in a spidery heap, twitched a couple of times, and lay still.

“That was brilliant,” Batanya said, trying not to pant.

“I took a running start, threw myself down, and away I went. It was just like sliding over ice.” Clovache looked rather pleased at the compliment. “Especially at the sides of the floor where no one walks.”

Crick was staring at them wild-eyed while Batanya cut the remnants of the tattered net away from their limbs.

“You all right?” Clovache asked him, clapping him on the shoulder by way of encouragement.

“Yes,” Crick said. He took off the idiotic goggles. He had quite sharp blue eyes underneath them. Without the sparkly distraction, his face was bony and agreeable and intelligent. “I want to say right now, you two are worth every penny I paid.”

“Say that after you get back alive,” Batanya advised him, as Clovache deposited the neotaser into the pocket designed for it. After the slide across the slug slick, her summer armor was a little grubby, but completely intact. Clovache’s hood had come off in the fracas, and she tugged it back over her matted hair. (“If you have an iota of vanity, this is not the job for you,” the sergeant who’d recruited her from her home village had said. Clovache, like all the young recruits, had lied.)

“We have to get out of here fast,” Batanya said, and without another word, they all stepped over the bodies and hurried down the tunnel. With a glance at the map, Crick indicated a dark opening to the side, again to the left, and they ducked into it, none too soon. Howling, another gray quadrupedal creature loped across the spot they’d just vacated.

Batanya wondered if the gray creatures had some kind of mind-link. Perhaps the dead one had sent some kind of signal when he was wounded.

After a long moment, they heard an eerie wailing. The second soldier had found his dead buddy. This was going to draw all kinds of attention to the area, and the faster they relocated, the better.

Batanya made the punching gesture with her fist that meant “move out,” and they hurried away from the wailing. This time they were going west, following Crick’s gestures. This tunnel was particularly slick, and they had to pick their way very carefully to avoid landing on their asses. The unpitted glassiness of the slugs’ hardened secretions argued that this passage was not much traveled by the minions of Lucifer; that was the good part. It also argued that the slugs used it a lot. That, of course, was the bad part. Batanya had a momentary image of being beneath one of the slugs as it moved with its slow, sure, rippling motion. She could feel the goo clogging her nose and mouth until she couldn’t breathe. She would harden to the floor after the slug had passed.

Then she shook herself vigorously. Letting one’s imagination take over was an indulgence that sapped the energy of a warrior. She glanced over her shoulder at Crick, who was shuddering. Maybe he’d had the same mental image.

From behind him, Clovache hissed, “Hurry up!”

Their luck held for ten frantic minutes. Then they heard the dragging sound of an approaching slug, and there was no handy escape hatch. In fact, there was not an intersecting tunnel opening as far as the eye could see. If there was one around the next bend, they simply couldn’t count on reaching it before they met the oncoming slug.

“Back,” Batanya ordered. Abruptly, they were hurrying as fast retracing their steps as they had been going forward. The first tunnel mouth they spotted also contained an approaching slug; it was so close to issuing forth into their main tunnel that its antennae were waving in their direction. They kept on going, hearing the relentless progress of the larger creature behind them, until they spotted another opening, a much smaller one.

It was like a baby tunnel, but it represented safety at that moment, and they dove into it with all haste. They had to crawl in on their knees. At least it was extensive enough to hold all three of them.

“The slugs don’t seem to be sentient,” Batanya said, keeping her voice low. “That is, I don’t think they’re smart enough to be working for the King of Hell. I think the slugs made the tunnels.”

Crick said, “Lucifer adapted the idea from the slugs. When the surface planet was growing uninhabitable, he began exploring down here; or at least, he sent his creatures and hirelings down here. Many of them died because they underestimated the sheer power of the slugs. The nasty things don’t think much, but they’ve got very strong instincts, and they can attack with surprising speed when they’re angry.”

This was a flood of information. “What makes them angry?” Clovache asked.

“Anything blocking their way,” Crick said.

“What do they eat?”

“Anything blocking their way.” Crick looked apologetic. “They seem to take nutrients from the soil. But when they run over someone, they generally pause on top of them, and suck up everything they can.”

That was much worse than Batanya’s mental image, and she felt quite sick for just a moment. “Then we’d better not get under them,” she said, in the toughest voice she could manage. “Why don’t Lucifer’s warriors clear them out of the tunnels? Surely they’re the ones in the greatest danger?”

“Lucifer needs the slugs too much,” Crick explained. “They do most of the digging for him. Of course, he can’t really direct where the slug tunnels go, but they add to his palace for free. At the same time, the slugs stabilize the tunnels with their secretions. He only has to shore up the occasional roof. Plus, the slugs are good at patrolling the existing passageways. If he loses the odd fighter, he doesn’t really care.”

“You know a lot about this.” In the dim light, Batanya couldn’t read their client’s expression, but she had the impression he flinched.

“Yes,” he said. “I was a prisoner here for quite some time. Lucifer enjoys talking.”

“This is information it might have been good to have before,” Batanya said. “Not so much about your imprisonment, though that’s interesting, of course.” Batanya could be polite when she chose. “This stuff about the slugs… We needed to know that before now.”

“Why don’t you tell us something else we might need to know?” Clovache suggested. “Just in the interest of keeping you alive.” Another slug was coming. They could hear the distinctive dragging sound, inhale the noisome smell. They were stuck here for a few minutes.

“Belshazzar heard from an informant that the conjuring ball was in the private cabinet of the King of Hell,” Crick said. “It was a commission steal. I was hired by Belshazzar partly because I’m good, partly because I owed him a lot of money anyway. But I did succeed in getting the ball, though it was in the darkest corner of the darkest cabinet in Lucifer’s apartment…”

“Less with the colorful and more with the facts,” Batanya said firmly.

Crick was a bit disconcerted to be knocked out of his storytelling groove, but he nodded obligingly. “Actually, it was in a special room off the king’s bedroom. His, ah, toy room, so to speak. Belshazzar was pretty sure I’d get to see that room when Lucifer found out I was actually one of the last of the Harwell Clan.”

Batanya’s eyes widened. Clovache looked bewildered.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means our client here has special physical attractions.”

Clovache looked him over, couldn’t see it. She liked her men big and burly. “Like what?”

When Crick just shrugged, Clovache looked at her lieutenant. “What?” she asked.

Batanya said, “Crick here has two penises.”

“Get out of town,” Clovache said. “Really?” She sounded both admiring and intrigued.

Crick nodded, trying to look modest. “There are few of us left. We don’t tend to be model citizens, according to the rules of other societies, so the Harwell Clan has been decimated in the last decade.”

“Is there anyone who doesn’t want to hurt you?” Clovache asked.

“Sure. You two.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Batanya muttered. She pulled her hood down and ran her fingers through her short black hair. “Okay, so how’d you get the conjuring ball into the barracks?”

“They didn’t know I had it,” Crick said. “When I decided it was time to take my leave of the king-his demands got rather tiresome-I ran away, taking the conjuring ball with me. When it was obvious I was going to be captured, I concealed it.”

“Where?” Batanya asked bluntly.

“Ah, in the only available place.”

“And they didn’t search you thoroughly?” Batanya was professionally astonished. “It wouldn’t get by us.”

Crick half-bowed to them. “I have no doubt,” he said politely. “However, they thought I might have stolen one of Lucifer’s big pieces of jewelry or some of his coins, which could not be concealed in the same manner, and they didn’t think of checking me to see if I’d made off with anything else of value. I, ah, couldn’t tolerate the concealment anymore, so in a moment when no one else was in the room, I hid the ball. They’d parked me in a room in the barracks while the sergeant needed them to beat another prisoner, and that gave me ten minutes locked by myself in a room without a window. I took advantage of the opportunity.”

“So you want us to take you back into the barracks, find the room where you were held, extract the conjuring ball, and get you out again alive. To return you to Spauling. Where you have to seek sanctuary because Belshazzar wants to kill you. Or perhaps you want to send the ball to Belshazzar in the hopes that he’ll honor his original contract with you. And King Lucifer wants you back in his playroom.”

“I suppose all that’s true,” Crick said. For the first time, when he tried to sound cheerful, he failed.

“Belshazzar is angry because of your tardiness and your loss of the ball, and Lucifer is angry because you ran away before he’d finished playing with you.”

“That’s a fair summary,” Crick admitted.

“How’d you get the fee for the witches at the Collective? I’m just curious,” Clovache said. “It’s not my business. But I know they don’t extend credit.” Batanya’s shoulders heaved with silent laughter at the idea.

“Ah, well, I may have lifted a few things from the houses of various nobles in Spauling.”

“A few things? Must have been more like a cartload, to have afforded us.”

“You’ll be interested to know I got a price break as long as I specified the two guards I wanted to hire.”

Both the women became very serious instantly. “Trovis,” hissed Batanya.

“He really has a big hate against you,” Crick said. “When he heard where I needed to go, he jiggered around the duty roster so that your names came up.”

Batanya and Clovache looked at each other. “When we get back,” Clovache said, “we’ll take care of him. This has gone on long enough.”

“Why does he hold such a grudge?” Crick asked. The two turned as one to stare at him. “Oh, ladies, come on! We’re in this together. If I make it back alone, I’ll kill him for you.”

“Good enough,” Clovache said. “My esteemed senior, here, turned him down so forcefully she broke his arm.”

Crick whistled silently. “I take it a plain refusal wouldn’t suffice?”

“He wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Batanya said. “He was waiting in my room when I came home one night. I tried being tactful, which doesn’t come easily to me. I tried being firm. I tried being rude. He persisted. The time came to try force.”

“He broke her nose,” Clovache said to Crick. “He broke her collarbone. But she broke a major bone of his, so she won.”

“He cried,” Batanya said, her lips curving in a slight smile. “But enough of happy reminiscences. We’ve hunkered here long enough. Time to be on the move.”

This time Crick had to brace himself a bit before he stepped out into the larger tunnel. Batanya thought she knew what had made him run before he was ready, during his earlier stay with the king. Maybe he’d lost his nerve, maybe he’d lost his ability to handle the physical tastes of Lucifer, but Batanya was willing to bet he’d lost his tolerance for the tunnels.

She couldn’t deny that she shared a bit of that feeling. In fact, Hell was awful. She took a deep breath of the thick stinking air, and the closed-in feeling began to lay a blanket over her normal brisk spirit. The indirect light wasn’t bright enough to really illuminate the way; it was better than nothing, but its dull consistency added to the gloomy atmosphere. They’d moved out again, but their pace was too slow. Batanya felt that their energy was being sapped by the place.

Batanya realized their mission had to be completed at what speed they could summon. They needed to get out of the tunnels and back home before they grew too tense-or too depressed-to cope. She’d never encountered such a set of circumstances.

“You remember our last mission?” she said suddenly to Clovache.

Clovache was visibly surprised at Batanya’s question. “Of course.”

“That was a very bad situation. The building exploding, our client being completely defenseless and unable to walk. Yet I never despaired, and I never thought we wouldn’t get out of it.”

“Senior, do you have a fever?”

“The tunnels are getting to me and Crick, here. You don’t seem to be as bothered by them. You may have to take over the lead.”

“I don’t mind them. Just say the word, senior.”

“Thanks, junior. I’ll let you know.”

Batanya turned and began to lead the way again. Crick kept possession of the map, using whispers or a pointing finger to give directions. They kept to smaller tunnels so they’d be less likely to meet up with Hell’s denizens. The downside to this stratagem was that when they did meet up with a creature, there was no side tunnel to help them dodge the attack, which came instantly. During an incredibly long journey that seemed to last at least six hours, but actually lasted perhaps two, the Britlingens killed at least ten of Hell’s odder creatures. Only by the narrowest of margins, the three avoided the slow but inexorable progress of two slugs. Batanya’s fingers began to tremble, and she knew the time was approaching when she’d have to hand over leadership to her junior.

But before she had to cede her position, they were captured.

It happened very quickly. They were caught in the worst possible situation, in a long stretch where there weren’t any hidey-holes to duck into. Also, the tunnel was gently curved, so the oncoming enemy was hidden from them until there was no possibility of escape. No change in sound announced their coming. These soldiers were like large dust bunnies. They progressed by rolling silently down the slick floors. At first, Batanya was inclined to laugh, but Crick’s expression told her that they were in big trouble. “Run!” he said hoarsely. “Run!” They reversed, but Batanya, who was now in the rear, was overcome within seconds.

It was like being sucked up in a vacuum cleaner, Batanya thought, as she gagged and choked on the dust and bits of hair and trash that made up the creature’s body. It managed to get strands twisted around her wrists and to lift her off the floor so she had no traction. She began to kick out and throw her body from side to side, but somehow the dust bunny surrounded her with strands and particles of debris that restrained her efficiently.

“Clovache!” she called. “You?”

“Held fast,” came a muffled voice. “Crick?”

There was only a choked series of coughs to indicate Crick’s position.

The ball began rolling down the tunnel, Batanya inside. She rapidly became so dizzy that her priority changed from escaping the creature to not throwing up.

The heat increased as her encompassing, nebulous captor rolled through the passages. Finally, the sense of constriction eased. The wretchedly sick Batanya felt that they’d arrived in a large open space. Then movement blessedly ceased, and all the threads and bits of debris that had snared her simply unknitted. “Oh, shit,” she said, a second before she landed on a stone floor that had never known the passage of a slug.

The impact knocked her breathless for a minute, but the second she could inhale she was on her feet with her short sword drawn. The dustball that had held her rolled away, and for the first time she saw Lucifer’s great hall. It had a high vaulted ceiling and was randomly dotted with stone pillars. There was a throne carved out of the stone; it had been created when the rest of the hall was mined, and it stood in dark splendor by itself in the middle of the vast space. The handsome gentleman standing on its bottom step was wearing a three-piece suit and a neck scarf decorated with a huge ruby stickpin. He was blond. He was smiling.

“I always thought Lucifer would have black hair,” Clovache whispered, as she got up on one knee. She was a yard away, and she had given in to the impulse to vomit. Crick? Batanya looked around for their client, and she found him on the floor behind her. She positioned herself in front of his prone form and got ready to fight.

“Brave but foolish,” said the blond man. “Look.” He pointed behind her, and very cautiously Batanya turned her head. Just in the edges of the light that hung over Lucifer’s head was a host of creatures-demons, more of the quadrupeds, wolf-men, snakemen, dust bunnies, humans. There were at least two hundred of them, and they were all armed in one way or another.

“Well, shit,” Batanya said for the second time. She nudged Crick with her heel. “Shall I die in your defense?” she asked. Crick groaned, rolled on his side away from her, and puked, considerately aiming away from her boots. Clovache staggered upright and with fingers that were shaking so hard they were almost useless, she attached her wrist crossbow to her left arm, the bow cocked and at the ready and the arrows neatly lined up in their strap. Batanya had never been prouder of her junior.

“Surely he doesn’t want you to,” Lucifer said. “You two are so… formidable. The great thief Crick wouldn’t want to condemn two brave warriors to death unnecessarily?”

“No,” Crick moaned. “No, don’t do it.”

“That’s good, Crick! Now they can provide entertainment for my troops,” Lucifer said, smiling angelically.

“The Collective would frown on that,” Batanya said.

Lucifer’s smile dimmed a little. He strolled over to the little cluster of shaken outer-worlders. His nose didn’t wrinkle when he got within smelling distance, so Batanya figured his olfactory sense must have been damaged by his long sojourn in the fetid air of Hell. “The Britlingen Collective,” he said, only the faintest trace of a question in his voice. The two women nodded in unison. Lucifer made a face; a disappointed face, Batanya decided.

“I have no wish to fight the Collective,” Lucifer said. He brightened. “On the other hand, who’d know?”

“If we don’t come back, everyone would know,” Batanya said. “Our souls belong to the Collective. You’re aware of our death clause?”

Everyone who’d heard of the Britlingens had heard of the death clause. When a Britlingen died, his or her soul appeared in the recording hall, reenacting that death. The reenactment was recorded for posterity. The recordings were required viewing during the course of instruction.

“Perhaps some of my people could keep you just at the brink,” Lucifer suggested. “They’re quite talented at that.”

“They’ll die out of sheer pigheadedness,” Crick said, his voice raspy. “Lu, what the hell?”

Lucifer was close enough now for Batanya to see every detail. He was formed like a man, and was extremely handsome; his short blond hair was more golden and thicker than Crick’s, but it was smoothed back in the same way. Lucifer was also thin and well-muscled like Crick, but he made no pretense at foolishness. Even a sick bodyguard could register the avidity in his eyes when he looked at the recaptured Harwellian.

Clovache stood on Crick’s far side, her back to Batanya’s. There was a long moment of tension while they waited to hear what Lucifer would say.

“Oh, all right,” Lucifer said. He sounded both gleeful and a little sulky, as if he’d gotten what he wanted but it could have been a little better.

“All right what?” Batanya said, not relaxing in the least. A wolfman was snarling at her from three yards away, and she was keeping her eyes on him. He was close enough to a canine to give her the creeps. She was ready to sweep the sword across his throat, given half a chance. She could feel Clovache trembling at her back. The trip through the tunnels had taken its toll on the junior Britlingen.

“We’ll make a deal,” Lucifer told them. He took a step closer. “Stand down, and your client only has to stay for a week with me. Fight, and he stays the rest of his life.”

“Why are you willing to make such a deal?” Batanya said, after examining the idea briefly. “Kill us both, and you have him forever anyway.”

“True. But you’re right, I don’t want to get in bad odor with the Collective,” Lucifer said. “I’ll hold you all for a week, enjoy the delights of Crick… then you can all three return to the Collective, more or less unmolested. Besides, when I was taking inventory a few days ago, I found that an item is missing from my collection of wonderful things. I’d like to ask Crick a few questions about that, while we’re having fun. But I swear he’ll live, especially if he talks quickly.”

Batanya’s leg was touching Clovache’s, and she could feel Clovache’s leg begin to shake a bit harder.

She didn’t believe Lucifer, of course, but she couldn’t think of any counteroffer that would give them an advantage. The wolfman advanced an inch or two, his lips drawing back from his fangs. Another one of the four-legged creatures with a net eased a little closer on her left.

“What is the law?” Batanya said quietly.

“The client’s word,” Clovache whispered. There was a moment of silence.

“I accept your offer,” Crick said to Lucifer. His voice was devoid of any inflection.

“Oh, that’s good then,” Lucifer said. He beamed at the three. “Ladies, you can stand down. I have a lovely jail just waiting for you, and you can enjoy it all by yourself. I won’t permit any company. Crick, for you I have something else entirely.” The host of creatures circling them began yowling and laughing, or making whatever noise passed for it.

Batanya turned to help Crick up, and their eyes met squarely.

“He won’t keep to his word,” Crick said very close to her ear.

“What shall we do?” Batanya said. “We can fight to the death. I will kill you now, if you would prefer that to him.” She jerked her head toward the advancing Lucifer.

“No,” Crick said. “That part’s bad, but not fatal. I can get through it and even enjoy some of it. He won’t let me go, though. Something will happen to me, or you. We have to get out with the conjuring ball. I might as well die here if I don’t get out with it. It’s in Barrack Three, on top of the first cabinet on the right.”

Batanya said, “All right,” having no idea what she could do with the knowledge. “I’ll ask to speak to you in a couple of days.”

Crick patted her on the shoulder, turned to nod at Clovache, whose face was streaming with sweat, and then bowed to Lucifer.

“ Marl, take them to the cells,” Lucifer instructed the wolfman, and draped his arm across Crick’s shoulders to lead Crick away.

Batanya heard him say, “Love, I’ve gotten some new toys since you were here last,” and then the wolfman snarled at her. When he could see he had her attention, he jerked his shaggy head northward. The two Britlingens surrendered their weapons to two quadrupedal net-throwers, then trudged off, following the wolfman’s lead. The crowd of Lucifer’s hirelings surrounded them, but aside from an occasional poke or prod or gobbet of spit didn’t offer them harm. Batanya didn’t like being spit on, but then again, no one had ever died of it, unless you counted the acid-spitting lizards she’d encountered on a previous job. She cast an uneasy look through the crowd and didn’t spot any.

“Well,” she said to Clovache, “We’ve been in worse spots.”

“Right,” Clovache said, with some effort. Batanya could tell Clovache’s stomach was still acting up. “This is an evening at the Pooka Palace compared to some of the places we’ve been.”

Batanya almost smiled, to the astonishment of the crowd.

Jail in Hell was about what you’d expect. They passed through the guardroom, with weapons hung on the walls that even Batanya had never seen, and many that she had. The weapons ranged from full-tech guns to your basic swords and spears and clubs. The guards were your basic hostile and contemptuous louts. A snakeman flicked his forked tongue out to touch Clovache’s cheek as she passed him, and he laughed in a hissing kind of way at her expression of disgust. The wolfman growled, “Keep your tongue to yourself, Sha,” and Sha snapped to attention, or at least as close to that as a curved spine like his could manage.

Clovache and Batanya had to strip under all eyes, because they couldn’t remain in their armor; they had expected that, but it wasn’t pleasant, of course. They donned the drawstring pants and shapeless tunics they were given, along with pairs of thick socks with padded soles. Then Marl, who appeared to be the shift captain, unlocked a heavy door with a peephole in the middle, and held it open for the prisoners to pass through.

The cells were rough-floored, having been hewn out of the rock instead of being created by the tunneling slugs, and the dimensions were roomy since occasionally they had to house creatures much larger than humans. Batanya assessed hers in one quick look. There was a latrine in one corner, which was quite an odd shape since all species don’t poop the same way, and there was a cot, twice as wide as Batanya’s bed in Spauling, to accommodate a variety of creatures. Clovache’s cell was right by hers, and there were bars from floor to ceiling in between, spaced a little less than the breadth of a hand apart. In the same manner, the front of the cells were also barred from floor to ceiling, so the prisoners were always in view of their fellow prisoners and whoever happened to be in the jail block. There were only six cells. The first cell on each side was empty. The last one on the left became Batanya’s, and the one next to it, Clovache’s.

The two cells directly across from theirs were also occupied by humans. Opposite Batanya, a young man was sitting on his cot. He jumped up eagerly while the guards were locking up Batanya. He was wearing the same prisoners’ outfit, but on him it looked good.

The youth was slender, ethereally lovely, and very pleased to have some company. “People who can talk to me!” he said in a melodic voice. “Am I not beautiful? Do I not deserve to be admired?”

Since Batanya was busy pulling down the tunic and tightening the drawstring on the pants, she didn’t answer immediately. When she’d gotten herself arranged and the guards were occupied with Clovache, she turned to give him an examination. “Oh, yes, you’re pretty as a picture,” she said politely. “Why are you here instead of in Lucifer’s bed?” If Lucifer was hooked on men, she couldn’t imagine him turning down such a choice morsel. The rich chestnut of the youth’s hair, his wide green eyes, his smooth-as-silk tan skin… Well, it was enough to make your mouth water, if you’d been in any mood for fun and games. Batanya wasn’t.

“Oh, I was for a while,” he said. Even his voice was pleasant; just deep enough to be masculine, formed by a smiling mouth. “He was so incredibly lucky to have me! I shone in his bed like a star in the night sky! Not that I’ve seen the night sky in many ages. But I do remember it,” he added wistfully. He pulled his own tunic off over his head and doffed his trousers in a second graceful gesture. “Do you notice how lovely my ass is? Is not my cock perfect? And my legs-so straight, so well formed.”

The guards hardly gave the prisoner a glance as they exited. Presumably they’d seen the show before. Batanya was pleased to see that Clovache was regarding the young man with interest. He rotated slowly so that both newcomers could get a comprehensive look at his assets.

“Yes, very nice,” Batanya said, which was not nearly enough for the youth.

“You can’t have seen anything like me before,” he said to Clovache, coaxingly.

“That’s for damn sure,” she agreed, cocking an eyebrow.

“Yes, one of kind,” he said proudly. He couldn’t seem to speak of himself any other way. “It’s simply inexplicable that Lucifer could prefer anyone else to me. Though some of the things he liked to do hurt me and bruised my fair flesh,” he added, looking a little sad. “However,” he said, brightening, “the blue tint did look fascinating against my normal skin tone.”

The two Britlingens tried hard not to look at each other.

“You can put your clothes back on,” Batanya said. “You’re certainly very attractive, but we have more urgent things to think of. What is your name, handsome?”

“Narcissus,” he said. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

“Yes,” Clovache said, with every appearance of sincerity. “We’ve heard of you.” She turned to Batanya and winked. Batanya was relieved her junior was feeling well enough to react to the young man.

“Oh, my fame has spread even to… wherever it is you come from?” This idea made him very cheerful. He picked up a small mirror and began examining his own face in it.

“I guess the guards let him have a mirror so he’d shut up,” Batanya muttered. Narcissus, totally involved in his reflection, didn’t seem to notice his fellow prisoners anymore.

“Excuse me,” called the woman across from Clovache.

The two Britlingens went to the front of their cells. “Can I help you?” Clovache asked. It was a ridiculous question, but it would start the conversational ball rolling.

“Can you tell me what year it is?” the woman asked.

“That depends on what dimension you inhabit,” Batanya said. “And what planet you live on.”

The woman sighed. She appeared to be in her forties. She had short brownish hair, straight white teeth with a marked gap in front, and a pleasant face. “I hear things like that here all the time, and I’m not sure what to make of it,” she said. She was wearing tailored pants and a blouse with funny dots down the front. Batanya realized, after a moment’s study, that these round objects were the means of holding the shirt closed. Buttons, that was what they were called. There was a heavy jacket with big lapels and a hat and goggles hanging on a peg on the wall, the only place in the cell to hang possessions.

“You’re not wearing the prison outfit,” Clovache said. “Why is that?”

“I don’t know. I landed on an island in the Pacific, after the longest flight I’ve ever had.” The handsome woman looked momentarily confused. “I don’t know exactly where we were when our plane began to falter. And my navigator didn’t survive the landing.” She was silent for a long moment. “When I got out of the plane, I was stumbling around, and I went between two palm trees, and suddenly I was here. I was caught right away by some of those spidery things, and they brought me down to show me to the handsome gentleman. Is his name really Lucifer? Have I gone to Hell?”

“You landed on Hell. Now we’re below the surface, of course. What country are you from?” There was something oddly out of place about this woman.

“I’m from the United States of America,” she said. “I’m an aviatrix.”

Clovache looked over at Batanya, who shrugged. “I don’t know what that is,” she said.

“I fly airplanes,” the woman said with simple pride.

“I’m afraid you’re not on Earth any longer,” Batanya said. “At least… you’re not in the same dimension as Earth. We were just there a few weeks ago.”

“I figured that I couldn’t be back home. And I am surely not in the Pacific.” The woman sat on the cot, as if her knees had simply given out. “I don’t know how long… What year is it? I left in 1937.”

“The year here wouldn’t be the same as the year it was when you left,” Clovache said. “We are Britlingens.”

The woman’s face stayed blank.

Batanya said, “You seem to have been caught up in some event, or some magic, unknown to us.”

The woman took a deep, shuddering breath. “What year was it when you were last on Earth?” she asked, as if not quite certain she wanted to know the answer.

“Ah… well past your time,” Clovache said. She glanced across Narcissus’s cell to Batanya. “After 2000, anyway, though I’m not sure I ever noticed what year it was.” She shrugged. “We knew we weren’t going to be there long.”

“It was in the 2000s,” Batanya agreed.

“I can’t understand this,” the woman said quietly. “I must be insane.”

“What’s your name?” Batanya asked. Maybe a change of topic would break the woman’s black mood.

“Amelia Earhart.” She glanced from Batanya to Clovache as if, despite everything, she thought they might recognize her name. She and Narcissus had that in common, anyway.

When Amelia saw that the two Britlingens hadn’t heard of her, she shrugged. Then her whole posture stiffened as the prisoners all heard a sound approaching the big door that was supposed to seal off the cells, though the guards had left it open. It was a sort of scratchy, snuffly sound. “Ah, the dogs,” Amelia said. “It must be almost dinnertime.”

“Dogs?” Batanya said hoarsely, at almost the same moment that Clovache said, “What kind of dogs?”

“They’re large,” Narcissus said. He was taking a break from staring at his reflection. He was polishing his mirror with the hem of his tunic.

“Large!” Amelia laughed, the first normal sound they’d heard in this place. “They’re giants!”

Two huge black hounds came through the doorway and began sniffing down the corridor. They had short, shining fur, pointed ears, and long, thin tails. Their mouths were open and their long pink tongues were lolling out, providing a sharp color contrast to their sharp white fangs and their glowing red eyes.

Batanya pressed herself as far back in her cell as she could go, unless she could gouge a niche in the stone wall. She managed to say, “Do they let the dogs come into the cells?” Dogs! It would be dogs! Why couldn’t the prison level be guarded by hydras, or gargoyles? Anything besides dogs.

“No,” Narcissus said. The dogs swung their heads toward him and took a tentative step closer to the bars of his cell. With a complete disregard for the long, sharp teeth and the demonic eyes, Narcissus moved to the front of the cell and stretched his hand between the bars. The fearsome beasts took a big sniff, and the one nearer Narcissus let the young man scratch his head.

The three women stared at this, and Narcissus smiled. “Even dogs are attracted to me,” he said happily. “But you know, I love them, too.”

Batanya shuddered when she thought of some of the things she’d seen in her travels. She hoped the bars remained in place, for Narcissus’s sake. “Attracted” could translate in many ways.

After a moment, the hounds seemed to lose interest in Narcissus and resumed their prowl down the corridor. The red eyes fixed on each prisoner in turn, and a growl began rumbling through their chests as they came to Batanya’s cell. Her face was set in the clenched expression of someone completely determined not to show what she was feeling, but she was pale and sweating.

“Just stay back from the bars,” Clovache said, keeping her voice smooth and calm with a huge effort. “They can’t get you. They’re just reacting to your…” Clovache couldn’t bring herself to say the word in connection to her senior.

Batanya understood her, though, and she said it herself. “Yes, they smell my fear.” She hated this, hated herself for feeling it. Hated having a weakness. You’re a warrior, she told herself. That was years ago. You’re too old to feel this, now.

Both the hounds thrust their heads against the bars of her cell, and they began to bay. It was like nothing she’d ever heard. It took every ounce of grit she had to keep her knees stiff. Two human guards came rushing down the corridor to check out the hounds’ agitation. The hounds were by now so excited that they wheeled and leaped toward the guards, who were completely taken by surprise. Both men were armed with a form of gun, but before the stocky man on the left could draw his from its holster, the nearest hound had leaped upon him and taken out his neck with one huge bite. The guard’s head, its expression still startled, rolled grotesquely across the floor, coming to stop at Amelia Earhart’s cell. The other man was faster and steadier. He was ready to fire before the second hound was on him. His finger tightened on the trigger and the first bullet thudded into the beast leaping for him. The hound landed short, whimpering, and its decapitating buddy swung his head toward the attacking guard and growled.

But the tall, brawny fellow was not going to back down. “I’ll shoot you down!” he screamed, and the dogs seemed to think better about attacking someone as aggressive as they were. The one that had been shot was healing already. A gout of black blood spattered on the stone was the only reminder of the wound.

“They’re not going to die,” Batanya said. She and Clovache noticed at the same moment that the black blood on the stone was beginning to hiss, and a cloud of smoke was rising from the place where it had lain. When the smoke dispersed, there was a miniature crater in the floor of the corridor.

“God almighty,” said Amelia Earhart.

Narcissus crooned to the dog, “Did the nasty man want to shoot you?” and the hound that had been shot snuffled the hand that Narcissus extended through the bars. Even the guard watched incredulously.

The hound licked Narcissus’s hand.

Clovache’s mouth fell open and they all waited to see what would happen. But Narcissus didn’t scream and fall on the ground in pain. He stood regarding the huge beast with self-centered benevolence, and the huge tongue, long and thin and somehow obscene, slathered the beautiful pale hands with dog spit. Only the blood was corrosive.

“Hmmm.” Batanya was calmer now. She was ashamed of her display of fear, and she’d begun thinking. The hounds padded off the way they’d come, the guard watching them cautiously and keeping his gun drawn. Only when they’d left the room and he’d watched them exit the guardroom beyond did he squat down to get a grip on his former colleague’s ankles. He tugged. Leaving an unpleasant swath of body fluids in its wake, the corpse began moving. Finally, it vanished from sight. After a moment or two, the guard came back for the head. He didn’t speak to the prisoners, and the prisoners didn’t say a word.

After he was gone, Clovache said, “I’m guessing the guards are chosen among the unpopular and the incompetent.”

Narcissus smiled. “Yes, the guards don’t last long. For a while, I got special concessions when I told them that since the dogs liked me, they’d be less likely to attack the ones who gave me things that made me happy. That worked for while; I got the mirror, and some extra food, and even a hairbrush. But then the bigger hound got angry with the female guard, one of those insectlike ones, and snapped off her foreleg. I didn’t get any extras after that.”

“How’d she walk without the foreleg?” Clovache asked.

“Not very well. In fact, I had to laugh,” Narcissus said.

Batanya looked at him. He was quite heartless, she decided, unless the pity and sympathy were directed at him. But he wasn’t useless.

“How often do the hellhounds come around?” she asked Amelia.

“Twice a day, at least that’s what they did yesterday,” Amelia said briskly. “I think this is morning, and this was their first visit. Do you know what time it is?”

Batanya shrugged. “I lost track.”

“I guess they’re let loose for regular patrols. Or maybe they’re controlled some other way. I haven’t seen a handler. They get to do what they want, as you saw.”

Batanya sat on her bed and began to think. At least she and Clovache were side by side. There was no point in counting on any help from Narcissus. At any moment, his mirror could distract him, and his only concern was himself. At any moment, he could decide that his own comfort and pleasure were better served by inaction than action. But Amelia seemed plucky.

Perhaps Narcissus, a mythological character known even in Spauling’s literature, could be considered timeless. Maybe he was even immortal. But Amelia Earhart, according to her own testimony, was a complete human, tied to a specific time line in Earth’s history. Somehow, she’d time-traveled successfully, a fact that the magicians and technicians who powered the Britlingen Collective would find extremely interesting. Not that they had any business tampering with time; in fact, the possibility gave Batanya deep misgivings. But returning with Amelia, if that was possible, would make up for having let their client Crick get captured. Plus, Amelia seemed like a sensible woman, and she didn’t seem to have any idea of how to return to her own time and place in the world, whatever that might have been.

“Listen, Amelia, Clovache,” Batanya said. She didn’t like that Narcissus could overhear, but she had no option. She had no writing materials, and she wasn’t telepathic, and she didn’t know sign language. When I get back, she thought, I’ll ask the teachers to put sign language on the curriculum. She smiled. It was extremely unlikely they’d live to do that, but she could tell her survival sense had decreed that she should plan on it.

Amelia and Clovache both came to the front of their cages.

“How long do we have before they feed us?” Batanya asked Amelia.

Amelia pondered. “They should be by with something pretty soon,” she said. “The feeding’s not exactly regular, but we do get three meals a day. It’s pretty much the same food no matter what the time of day is: not really breakfast, dinner, supper.”

Batanya said, “We have to get out of here. Sooner or later, Lucifer will get tired of Crick, or he’ll forget he doesn’t want to alienate the Collective-we’ll explain that to you later, Amelia-and he’ll have us killed, or we’ll meet an ‘accident.’ You’ll notice he’s pretty careless with his soldiers.”

“I’m listening,” Amelia said. “What about sissy-boy, here?” She nodded toward Narcissus’s cage. A glance told Batanya that the beautiful youth was busy brushing his chestnut hair.

“He’s all for himself,” Batanya said. “The best we can hope is that he doesn’t get in our way.” Narcissus, still sans clothing, began examining his body, pore by pore, as far as Batanya could tell. He lifted his genitals, gave them a good scan, and then dropped his package as casually as if it’d been a bunch of wilted flowers.

“What’s your plan?” Clovache said.

“Here it is.” It didn’t take long to explain.

In a little while, two guards (the one who’d escaped the hellhounds, and Sha) brought in a cart with four large bowls. The pass-through hatches for the bowls were at the bottom of the bars in the door, and each bowl was shoved through with very little care for whether it slopped over or not. A bucket of water followed it. This must have been intended for both washing and drinking, since there was a dipper hanging from the side of the bucket. Sha, the snakeman, still found Clovache attractive and showed his admiration openly.

“Show me what you’ve got, little one,” he hissed to Clovache, who looked a little anxious. Sha had a spear, and a dagger thrust through his belt. Lucifer had ordered the guards not to go into the cells, but Sha might disobey.

“He can’t let you out, and he can’t go in,” Amelia said. “He doesn’t have the key on his belt.” Batanya could tell by the relaxation in her shoulders that Clovache was relieved, though her face remained stony as he continued to tell her what he’d like to do with her.

“Who does have the key?” Batanya said to Amelia. She didn’t want Clovache to think she was worried. “The other guard doesn’t have it either.”

“I think the commander of the guard has it at all times, at least as far as I’ve been able to see. That would be the wolfy one called Marl.”

Clovache grew tired of Sha’s suggestive remarks and told him to fuck off. Batanya laughed, but she noticed that Amelia looked quite shocked. “I’m sorry,” Batanya called. “We are rough soldiers, and our language is sometimes just as rough.”

Amelia’s face cleared, and she managed to smile back at Batanya.

“Did you notice how that guard couldn’t take his eyes off me?” Narcissus asked, and the three women sighed in unison.

Batanya hunkered down to examine the contents of her supper bowl. She had a very rudimentary Plan A, and she turned it over in her head while she ate.

There was no Plan B.

Like good Britlingens, Batanya and Clovache consumed everything in their bowls. Batanya wasn’t sure what the meal was-some kind of noodle and some meat, though what the creature had originally been was anybody’s guess-but it wasn’t spoiled. She sniffed very carefully for poison, and asked Amelia how she’d felt after the other meals she’d eaten.

“Fine,” Amelia said, astonished.

At last Clovache took a mouthful to see if the food was drugged, since that was the job of a junior. The Britlingens waited for a few minutes.

“I feel fine,” Clovache said, and without further ado they dug in. There was a hunk of bread in the bowl, too, and it was fairly good. No vegetables; she guessed those would have been hard to produce underground. Not a healthy meal, but it would supply the energy they’d need.

“Save a bit of meat,” Batanya said.

After they’d eaten and rested, the two Britlingens exercised. Amelia and Narcissus were interested, Amelia because she was obviously a normally active woman and because she was bored, and Narcissus because he thought exercise might improve his body. Amelia showed them how to do “jumping jacks,” which amused Batanya. They ran in place, lunged, squatted, punched at the air in jabs (Amelia called that “shadow boxing”), and completed a hundred push-ups (at least, Clovache and Batanya completed a hundred). After a few more exercises, they all took a nap, for lack of anything better to do. The guards didn’t reappear for at least four hours, and then when they opened the door at the end of the corridor, it was to push the cart through again, so it was time for lunch… or maybe supper. Possibly breakfast?

Batanya was ashamed that she’d lost track of how many hours they’d moved through the tunnels before they’d been captured. They’d left Spauling in the middle of the afternoon, though that didn’t necessarily mean they’d arrived in Hell at the same time of day. And, really, did it make a difference? Some of the denizens of Hell were sure to be awake around the clock.

When she heard the click of the hounds’ claws on the stone floor, Batanya got ready, though her hands were not steady and sweat was already trickling down her back.

“I fucking hate dogs,” she whispered, but Clovache heard her.

“Have you reached in your pocket?” Clovache asked.

“Your outfits don’t have pockets,” Amelia said.

“We brought our own,” Batanya told her.

After a particularly successful mission, their client had given Clovache and Batanya a sizable bonus. Clovache had wanted to take a trip to Pardua and go to the famous male whorehouse there to see the dancing, but Batanya had persuaded her to visit a special medical technician instead. Batanya had a false wall in one cheek, prepared with careful and expensive surgery. In that secret thin pocket, she’d stowed a small flat blade. It was sharp enough and long enough to open a vein, whether her own or someone else’s, but it was strictly an emergency option.

The time had come to use it.

Clovache had a similar false pouch on the underside of her arm, high up near the pit. A very thorough search would have uncovered her pocket, and possibly Batanya’s, but they hadn’t been searched very thoroughly, proof of the fact that the worst soldiers got prison guard duty in Hell. Clovache stepped to the front of her cell at the moment Batanya did.

“Narcissus,” Clovache said. The young man stopped examining his fingernails and looked at her. “Don’t be upset,” she said steadily. “I promise you they’ll heal.”

“Good luck,” Amelia said, very quietly, as the hounds entered the jail corridor. Their massive black heads swung from side to side, as if they were considering who would taste best. Their red eyes glowed like burning coals.

The Britlingens held out the bits of meat they’d saved, for the hounds’ inspection. They were standing as close together as they could get at the juncture of their cells. Noses twitching, the two beasts approached cautiously. Clovache’s hand was just within the bars, and the hound sniffing at her meat shoved his head closer. It was much too broad to fit between the bars, but his nose extended inside the cell. While Clovache’s left hand fed the hound, her right hand slid between the bars to grip the broad studded collar, and then her tiny blade scored the hound’s skin at the neck. A gush of blood told her she’d struck the best spot, and that blood sprayed on the bars of the cell as the hound reared back, baying and shrieking.

The blood also spattered on Clovache’s hands.

Batanya’s hound turned slightly to leap against the bars at the juncture of the cells in an attempt to get at Clovache, and as he reared with his chest and stomach exposed, Batanya’s bladed hand darted out to rake the hound’s skin. She’d had the presence of mind to pull off her tunic and hold it to the dog, too, which was a good thing, since she didn’t get an arterial spray. Pulling the soaked tunic back through, she immediately rubbed the bloody cloth over the metal of the bars. She stuffed the tunic down at the bottom of the bars, so the blood remaining in the cloth might do some good. This left her standing bare-chested, but she pulled the blanket from her bed and draped it around her shoulders. She hoped they wouldn’t notice the absence of her tunic.

A group of guards rushed in to investigate the dogs’ commotion, and it took everything the Britlingens had to look stunned. Though Narcissus had flinched when the dogs were hurt, he was silent, at least for the moment. Amelia provided a great distraction by screaming up a storm, and since the guards looked at her and the hounds first, Batanya and Clovache had the chance to slide their thin blades into places that might escape inspection. Batanya’s went into the thick padding of her socks, and Clovache’s into a tiny crevice in the stone floor of her cell.

“Hands in the water!” Batanya said hoarsely, and Clovache immersed her hands in her water bucket. Batanya hoped it was quick enough to save Clovache’s skin.

“They attacked each other!” Amelia told the guards. The American woman was not a great actress, but she did look very excited. They believed her.

“I’ve never seen them turn on each other,” Sha hissed, but he didn’t seem inclined to ask more questions. After all, the prisoners were in their cells, and unarmed.

Though the hounds were still whining, their wounds were healing fast. Narcissus called them to him and stroked their huge heads while they whimpered. Narcissus had kept silent for so long that Batanya was hopeful he wouldn’t blurt out some information. He was watching all the action with an expression that sat oddly on his face.

“He’s thinking about something besides himself,” Clovache muttered to Batanya, who was standing as close as she could get, because she wanted a look at Clovache’s hands. “That can’t be good.” Tears were running down Clovache’s face. That meant the water immersion hadn’t completely worked.

“Steady,” she said, and Narcissus moved to the corner of his cell to look at the bars on Batanya’s. Batanya followed the direction of his gaze. The bars were beginning to smoke; just a little, easy to miss in the murky atmosphere, but still… Their eyes met. Come on, beautiful, she thought. Give me this. I’ll admire you till the pookas return to their burrows, if you’ll just give me this. She tried to smile winsomely, but it was too much of an effort. She gave him a good, hard stare. She was much better at that.

“What are you doing, bitch?” screamed Sha. Clovache whirled to face him, her fingers scattering drops of water. The skin of her hands was blistered, and Clovache clasped them behind her after a quick downward glance.

“Washing my hands, since the hounds slobbered all over them,” Clovache said. “What did you feed them, razor blades? Why’d they bite each other?” Sha glared at her, suspicion written all over his scaled face, and a third guard, one of the dust-balls, rolled around in an unbelieving manner.

The steam coming off the bars was slowly increasing in density, and any moment the guards would notice. If sheer force of will could have moved them, they would have shot back outside the doors. The hounds, casting malevolent looks at Batanya and Clovache, skulked out into the guardroom. The guards, after a few more threats and a lot more curses, followed. The doors slammed shut just in time, because the smoke was beginning to really pour off the bars that had been touched with hound blood.

“Let me see your hands,” Batanya said, and Clovache held them out. There were bright red blisters covering the palms of Clovache’s hands. They looked so painful that even Narcissus winced in sympathy. (He felt better after he looked down at his own white, unsullied hands.)

Clovache shrugged. “Worth it, if we get out. Will they come back in if we make a lot of noise?” she asked Narcissus.

“No,” said the beautiful youth after a moment’s thought. “Others scream and plead all the time. And they only came in before because the hounds were howling, and the hounds are favorites of Lucifer’s. An ogre beat his heads against the bars for an hour before they came to check, two weeks ago.” He looked at the Britlingens expectantly.

“You were so clever to keep silent when the hounds were in here,” Batanya said hastily. “I was so proud of you. I don’t know how we’d accomplish this without your help.”

Satisfied temporarily, Narcissus gave her a lovely smile and fetched his hairbrush.

The smoke roiled and thickened, and the air got even worse. After perhaps five minutes, the smoke began to dissipate, though the thick atmosphere made it hard to see what damage had been done. Batanya positioned herself carefully and swung the heavy water bucket at what she figured was the weakest point. She got as close as she could to examine the weak spot. She hadn’t caused any visible damage, but the impact of the metal-rimmed bucket against the bars hadn’t felt as violent as she’d expected. Heartened, Batanya swung the bucket again, putting all the strength of her upper body into the movement. The bars bent outward, and a few flakes fell off the fast-corroding metal. She swung again, and the metal bent outward. Clovache had grasped her own bucket in her damaged hands and began the same procedure on the bars of her own cell. That didn’t go as swiftly, because smearing the blood on a wide section had produced better results than a more intense application in a few spots. With a roar of sheer focus, Batanya swung the bucket for a tenth time, and a section of the bars broke off, creating an aperture large enough to allow her to climb out. Amelia cheered, Narcissus gaped, and Clovache sagged against her cot with relief. The next instant, she was back to swinging her bucket. While Batanya ran to hide behind the door, Clovache began to yell in time with her attacks on the bars.

Narcissus had told them the guards were slow to react to prisoner noise, and it took a few minutes before the combination of Clovache’s piercing screams and the banging of the bucket roused them to come check. The first one through the door was the snakeman, Sha, and Batanya was on his back instantly, slicing the side of his neck with her tiny blade. His blood was not red, more of a deep purple, and it didn’t spray, but welled sluggishly from the gash. But he crumpled to the floor, scaled hands clutching at the wound as if to keep his blood inside. Batanya leaped over him to attack the dustball. It didn’t seem to have a mortal spot to wound, at least to human eyes, but Batanya swung her arm as if there were a sword in it instead of an inch-and-a-half blade, and the startled dustball rolled farther into the corridor, bringing it closer to Amelia’s cell. Amelia thrust her arms through the bars and brought them together, as she would as if she had caught an assailant’s neck. Batanya had wondered if Amelia’s arms would cut through the dustball, but the aviatrix seemed to be compressing an area. The dustball reacted in an agitated fashion, so at least it was seriously frightened at being held like that. Compression was the key to defeating the creature.

Clovache, halfway out of her own cell, climbed back in to get her blanket from the cot.

“Stand away,” she yelled to Batanya, who obeyed instantly. Clovache tossed the blanket over the creature, and then she and Batanya threw themselves on it. The dustball began to deflate as they pressed it against the bars of Amelia’s cell, and when the two Britlingens dug their feet in and pushed harder, the escaping air achieved a moaning sound. The smell was even more unpleasant than the other smells in the jail, and Amelia looked really queasy.

After a silent struggle that seemed to go on for hours, the dustball was squashed flat. When the Britlingens cautiously released their pressure, a large lump of hair, trash, and dust fell to the stone floor. Clovache threw the blanket on top of it, in case it could pump itself back up, and she dragged the snakeman’s ghastly body on top of that, while Batanya divested Sha of his dagger.

“What’s happening?” Marl called from the guardroom. The door had swung shut behind Sha and the dustball, so he didn’t have a good view, and he wasn’t at the peephole-too cautious, maybe.

“Help! Help! He’s killing me!” Clovache screamed. Furious that Sha was interfering with a valuable prisoner, Marl threw open the door and rushed into the prison wing, sword drawn. Batanya tripped him and stabbed him through the neck with Sha’s dagger. Within seconds, they’d gotten the keys off his belt and Batanya was unlocking Amelia’s cell. The tall woman didn’t waste any time getting out, and the four former prisoners clustered together for a minute.

“Amelia, Narcissus, I don’t know what you want to do, but Clovache and I have to rescue our client,” Batanya said. “Does either of you have any knowledge of where Lucifer’s chambers are?”

“I do,” Narcissus said. “I spent hours there, entrancing and entertaining him.” He made a ludicrous attempt to look modest.

“Will you take us there?” Batanya asked. There was no time for finesse. They were in the middle of hostile territory.

“We want to keep you with us as long as we can,” Clovache said more diplomatically, “and if you can’t help us, we have to be on our way.”

“Since you ask so nicely,” Narcissus said, casting a cold look in Batanya’s direction, “I will lead you there.”

There was no question that Amelia wanted to go. She was pale with anxiety, and choking on the suffocating miasma of the jail. The four ex-prisoners crept to the open door. The air in the guard chamber outside was remarkably stinky, but it was a big improvement nonetheless.

For a few seconds they just breathed.

The great thing about the guardroom was the weapons hanging on the walls. Batanya felt much more like herself with a gun in one hand and a sword in the other. Clovache spotted their armor, and seized it with a yip of delight. She was about to shimmy into it when Batanya stopped her. “It’s too Britlingen,” Batanya said. “We need to be guards.” The two pulled on the green pants and tunics that the guards wore. Clovache reluctantly bundled the two suits into a backpack. She would have felt much better with it on her body, but Batanya knew Clovache could see the sense of her decision. To compensate, Clovache armed herself to the teeth with two guns, a short spear, and a dagger.

“We’re going to pretend we have you two in custody,” Batanya explained to Amelia and Narcissus, who had pulled on his clothes. “If we herd you ahead of us, that’s a good way for Narcissus to guide us to our client without it being obvious we don’t know the way.” Amelia nodded. She was so anxious to leave the jail that she couldn’t form words.

The Britlingens held their new weapons at businesslike attitudes. When Batanya glanced down at the gun she held, she found she had no idea what would happen when she fired it, or even if she had it pointing in the right direction. Narcissus stepped ahead of them, casting a look over his shoulder to make sure they’d all noticed his beautiful butt. They smiled at him reassuringly and nodded to show encouragement and admiration. He led them to the right into the large trunk corridor they’d traversed to get there.

When they passed another group of Lucifer’s soldiers, Batanya gripped the gun so hard she thought it might bend, but no one questioned them. One woman whistled after Narcissus, which pleased him no end, though he seemed equally happy when a snakeman pinched his left lower cheek.

“When you get through with him, pass him along,” hissed the snakeman.

“Lucifer wants him,” Batanya said, shrugging.

Because of the uniform tunics they’d donned in the prison area, they went a long way without challenge. The two Britlingens looked very different without the hoods of their summer armor, and they were certainly sufficiently tough to pass as guards. As they moved through the tunnels, the traffic increased and the tunnels themselves became wider and decorated with paintings and lamps. These bits of civilization gradually increased in frequency and splendor, until they found themselves in the audience hall where they’d first seen Lucifer. Narcissus led them across this, though they were going much more slowly now because of the groups of servants or soldiers who were also crossing the large space. Hell sure was busy. Lucifer wasn’t in the great hall, to Batanya’s relief. She wanted to reclaim Crick when there weren’t scores of Lucifer’s minions around.

After they’d freed their client, all they’d have to do was fight through all these savage creatures to get to the surface, or at least find some quiet and undisturbed spot so the Britlingens could trigger their beacon and their party could be returned to the castle in Spauling.

That was all they had to do.

Batanya quelled a moment of despair. Britlingens never gave up. There was a client to save. She thought of her picture going up on the Wall of Shame, and her lip curled in distaste.

They were brought up short just at that moment by the four guards barring the two magnificent doors. Narcissus’s dead halt meant this was Lucifer’s personal suite.

Talk their way in, or just start killing? If a troop of soldiers hadn’t appeared just at that moment marching by on some other business, Batanya might have found out how well her new sword worked. But there were at least twelve soldiers, and two of them were the quadruped net-throwers. Batanya had formed a strong disinclination to tangle with them again, if she could help it. Clovache glanced at her senior, a question in her face, and Batanya nodded.

Clovache said, “Lucifer wants these two,” jerking her head to indicate Amelia and Narcissus.

“He didn’t say anything to us,” the guard with the fanciest uniform said. She was a huge woman with golden skin and golden eyes. Narcissus fluttered his eyelashes at her, and she choked back a surprised laugh. “I’m Ginever, day captain,” she said.

“I’m Clovache, prison guard. The Master apparently told Marl, who ordered us to bring them,” Clovache said.

Ginever looked surprised, as if Lucifer talking directly to Marl was unlikely. It probably was, considering Marl had been a lowly prison guard overseer.

“Let me just ask,” she said. “He’s got his shiny toy back, and he doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s playing.”

Batanya felt an unexpected wave of pity for Crick. The Harwell Clan was nearly extinct because of its members’ unusual physical attribute. Being gifted had its price. When Batanya had the time to be curious, she promised herself she’d learn the clan’s history.

“This one is wanted to join in the fun,” Clovache said, pointing to Narcissus. “You can see the attraction.”

“Oh, yes,” said the golden woman, smiling. “Oh, yes. He’s been here often enough before. Well, I must check.” She knocked on the left door, a quick set of three raps. Her ear to its surface, she waited. She must have heard some sound of assent, because she drew back to open the door. Batanya exhaled a silent sigh of relief.

“In, prisoners, move your feet!” she said, as curtly as a real prison guard. Ginever was no fool and certainly had a full complement of arms as well as three comrades, and the sooner they were out from under her eyes, the better.

Clovache led the way, followed by Narcissus and Amelia Earhart, with Batanya prodding from behind with the sword.

Lucifer, a flogger in his hand, was standing by a pillar. Crick was bound to the pillar, his back exposed and striped with blood. Batanya gulped, resisting the nausea that rose in her throat. Lucifer was staring at them, trying to figure out their presence, and in the split second before he could decipher their intent, Batanya leaped at him with the sword.

She got him, right through the stomach, but not before he managed to swing the flogger. It raked Batanya’s back without enough force to draw blood through her clothing, but enough to make her dig in the sword for all she was worth.

Lucifer’s beautiful face was twisted with anger. Despite the blade in his guts, he said, “I’ll kill you for this, if I live.”

“Oh, of course you’ll live,” Clovache said. Narcissus was looking at Lucifer hungrily, as if seeing someone else lovely was enough to excite his libido. Amelia was throwing up into a pot on the floor. Crick looked at them as if they were all as beautiful as Narcissus. But what he said was, “Get me out of this.”

“The key?” Batanya said. Lucifer sneered at her. Batanya pulled a dagger from her belt. “You don’t need both those pretty blue eyes,” she said. “Which one do you want the most?”

“On the table by the bed,” Lucifer said. Clovache ran to fetch it, and Batanya risked a glance to check on Narcissus and Amelia. Suddenly Lucifer bellowed at the top of his lungs, and in quick response there was pounding at the door. Ginever called, “Master? Master?”

“Kill them all!” Lucifer yelled, and the door began to bow inward.

“Find an exit,” Batanya told Amelia, who’d finished being sick. “There’s sure to be one.” Amelia nodded, braced herself visibly, and began scanning the walls of the huge room. It was a very busy boudoir. It contained an enormous bed, many hangings, lots of torture paraphernalia and knickknacks, and a roaring fire; about what you’d expect of the personal apartment of the King of Hell.

“Here,” Amelia called. She’d pulled aside a wall hanging depicting-well, it was as complicated as the threesome of soldiers they’d seen in the tunnels-and sure enough, there was a door.

“It doesn’t lead to the surface,” Lucifer said. “You’re all going to die. But not before I have some fun with each of you, I hope.”

“You already had fun with me,” Narcissus said plaintively. “Surely you haven’t forgotten me?”

“Just kill him right now,” Lucifer advised Batanya, and for a second she was tempted. But there were other things to do, and besides, she had a jumbled feeling that killing Narcissus would be like breaking an ancient porcelain vase. He wasn’t very useful, but he was beautiful.

Lucifer’s wound was healing, as she’d expected, and he wouldn’t be on the floor for long. The pounding at the door had accelerated, and there wasn’t time to do more than wrap one of Crick’s chains around the no-longer-bleeding lord and lock it with one of Crick’s locks. Clovache had Crick moving and had picked up one of Lucifer’s tunics and pulled it roughly over their client’s head. Crick himself bent with obvious pain to pull on some shoes, and then they were tumbling out the door Amelia had found.

Batanya hadn’t been sure Narcissus would follow, he’d seemed so intent on forcing a compliment from his former lover-or torturer; but the beautiful youth trailed after them, though he didn’t seem nearly anxious or urgent enough to suit her.

The door had to be blocked behind them. There was nothing in the dusty passage to help them do this, and the door didn’t lock on this side.

Clovache said a few choice things, and Crick said, “Stand back.” His voice was shaky but clear, and Batanya was grateful that he was well enough to remain on top of their perilous situation. Crick muttered a few words under his breath and pressed his hand in a curious gesture toward the door.

“It will hold them for a few minutes,” he said, and they hurried away. “That’s pretty much all the magic I have, so don’t expect more,” he added, getting the words out with an obvious effort. The passage was stone-floored like the rest of the underground palace, but it had been made strictly by men. The roof was braced, and there was no slug slime on the floor and walls.

“Do you know where this leads?” Batanya asked Narcissus.

“I didn’t even know it was here,” he said. “I never tried to escape from Lucifer before.” Of course not.

It would have been wonderful to have Crick’s map, but there was no telling where it had gone after Crick had been stripped. It wasn’t like they had a lot of choices to make; the passage had so far not branched off.

“We’re going northwest,” Crick said, when they paused to get their breath. By now, the back of Lucifer’s tunic was striped with Crick’s blood. His face looked even bonier than it had before. Batanya admired his fortitude. “That’s the direction of the guards’ barracks.”

“You’re still determined to retrieve the conjuring ball,” Batanya said with resignation.

“I might as well go back into that room and let him kill me there if I don’t return with the ball. I held out telling him where it was. I can’t come back to get it.”

“Crap.” Batanya wanted to pat him or choke him, she wasn’t sure which.

“What is the law?” Clovache said sullenly.

“The client’s word,” Batanya said, with resignation.

They started out again, trying to move faster. Amelia was uncomplaining, but she was panting heavily, and she stumbled from time to time. Narcissus was in better shape, but he was not as keen as the rest were on getting out of Hell. Crick kept pace gamely, but he didn’t object when Batanya put her arm under his shoulder to help him along.

The passage did branch off, finally, though the dust on the floor would surely indicate which way they’d taken. There was no help for it. They barged on straight ahead, since according to Crick that was still the best way to the barracks. The passage had led them slightly uphill, Batanya had noticed, and ahead of them they saw extra light coming from a grate in the floor.

The small group paused, and Clovache whispered into Narcissus’s ear, “You must keep silent.” They crept forward as quietly as they could, and Batanya felt Amelia’s arm quiver with the effort the older woman was making to calm her ragged breathing.

When they got very close to the grate, Batanya leaned Crick up against the wall and stepped silently up to it by herself.

She was looking down into one of the soldiers’ mess rooms. There were about twenty various creatures sitting around a table eating bread and meat, and drinking-those that had mouths-from bowls. They were all talking (or growling, or hooting), and when there was a loud alarm, at first they ignored it. Suddenly a large snakeman bounded into the room, and he bellowed (as much as his throat would permit him), “To arms! Lucifer has been attacked!” Whether from devotion or fear or professional pride, the collection of soldiers cleared out of the mess hall in double quick time.

“Shit,” Batanya said, and Crick tried to smile.

“I agree,” he said. “But at the same time, this is the last place they’d expect us to come, and if they’re clearing out, this is our best chance to retrieve the ball.”

“Which way?” Batanya said, having no argument to make with that.

“Forward,” he said, trying to put some energy in his voice.

So on they hurried. Two more grates were passed, Crick taking a careful look down each one, and at the third one he said, “This is it.”

Batanya’s shoulders wanted to sag with relief, but she kept herself braced and ready for action. She had an awful feeling she could hear the sound of pursuit coming up the passage; it was some way distant, but their pursuers would catch up quickly since they were all fit. So she wouldn’t think about what would happen after that, she squatted down to remove the grate, which wasn’t secured in any way; why would it be? Before she could speak, Crick grasped the rim and lowered himself down to the bed that was almost squarely beneath the grate. Crick gasped in sudden pain and dropped heavily, and the bed broke. Crick ended up on the floor, curled in a ball. In a flash, Batanya lowered herself through the opening and dropped a lot more gracefully.

“You idiot,” she said as she helped Crick to rise. “Where is it?” He pointed to some cabinets lined up against the wall, obviously intended to hold the soldiers’ effects.

“On top,” he said. “On top of the first cabinet to the right.” This proved to be a narrow cabinet with three lines scratched on it. Batanya opened the cabinet, stood on the lowest shelf, and heaved herself up. Sure enough, back against the wall where it would be out of sight, there was the conjuring ball, hastily concealed by Crick months before. It was wrapped in a rag that had been used to wipe it clean. Remembering where Crick had kept it concealed, Batanya was grateful. She grabbed the ball and leaped down, bounding over to Crick in almost the same moment. He took it and tossed it up to Clovache. Batanya gripped Crick around the hips and lifted. Clovache and Amelia reached down and seized Crick’s upstretched hands, and together they bundled the thief up into the passage again. Once he was out of the way, Batanya made a good leap to seize the lip of the opening herself, and with the help of the two women she managed to join the others, just as the door of the room below opened with a crash.

“Now,” she said to Clovache. “Now!”

Clovache pressed a lump behind her ear where the beacon was implanted. Then she pressed it again. Batanya reached behind her own ear and pressed hers three times. Five people to transport.

Nothing happened.

“Fuck,” Batanya said. “Can the ball get us out of here?”

“I don’t know how to get it to…” Crick began, and then the sounds of pursuit became immediate. Batanya swung around to face the oncoming horde, and Clovache picked up her short spear and hurled it at the lead figure, one of the snakemen. He fell and the others stumbled around him, but it was only a matter of seconds before they were overwhelmed. Crick dropped the conjuring ball, and Amelia retrieved it automatically. “I want to go back,” she said, almost weeping.

Pop!

There was confused swirl of colors and sounds, the impression of a high wind, and they were standing under a brilliant sun on what appeared to be a small island. The sea surged all around; there was no other land in sight. There were a few palm trees, and Batanya heard a bird scream. A wrecked airplane was crumpled on the beach before them, a dead man lying next to it. Amelia’s face was a study in shock, and Batanya was sure her own face matched it. Clovache, thinking very quickly, seized the conjuring ball from Amelia’s hand, and said, “To the beacon.”

Pop!

The sounds and colors again, the dizzying whirling feeling, and then they all arrived on the platform in the hall of the magicians and mechs.

There was quite a crowd in there; and it took Batanya a long second to realize she didn’t need to kill them. Clovache actually took a swipe with her short sword, which made her commander leap back smartly.

“Hold!” Flechette bellowed. “Hold, you fool!”

After a moment of reorientation, Batanya understood she didn’t need to stand in front of Crick any longer, and she stepped aside. Crick was doubled over, gasping in pain. Amelia stared around her, so stunned it would be hard to pick one emotion from another as they crossed her face. After a moment’s evaluation, Narcissus trotted down the few stairs to the handsomest person he could see, a young mech woman. Though he was grimy and wearing his prison tunic, she looked at him as if she’d seen the face of a god, which Batanya supposed was not too very far from the truth. Narcissus held out his hand, and the mech had a hard job to decide whether to shake it or kneel to kiss it. She settled for holding it and basking in the smile Narcissus bestowed. “Do you like dogs?” he asked her.

Batanya and Clovache helped Crick down to the floor. Crick said, “For a bit, there, we didn’t know if you would get us out in time.” He made an effort to sound casual. That was exactly what Batanya had been thinking, but she hadn’t wanted say it out loud (especially in front of her junior).

“This asshole almost prevented us from extracting you,” Flechette said, and for the first time Batanya noticed that Flechette was gripping Trovis by the arm. “He tried to persuade the magicians and mechs that you’d sent a false signal, that the minions of Hell would home in on the beacon if they acted on it.”

“I didn’t believe him,” said the young mech woman, with a shy smile. “I called Flechette to overrule him.”

“Can I execute Trovis?” Clovache asked. “He has tried to have us done in more times than I can count, and all because Batanya wouldn’t lie with him and broke his arm making him back off.”

“Ah,” said Flechette. “Perhaps we shouldn’t kill him… but he must be punished.”

Clovache still had the conjuring ball. Though Trovis made an effort to dodge and to twist out of Flechette’s grip, Clovache ran her arm around Trovis’s neck, looked down at the ball, said, “Go back!” Pop! She and Flechette and Trovis were staring at a vast green sea, scraggly palm trees, a wrecked airplane, and a dead man.

“Drop Trovis’s arm,” she told Flechette, who did, at least partly from surprise at getting an order from a junior. Clovache took a step back from the gaping Trovis herself, gripped Flechette’s shoulder, concentrated on the ball, said, “Back to the hall,” and Pop! They were back in the magicians’ hall.

Minus Trovis.

“Brilliant,” said Batanya.

When she’d collected herself, Flechette said, “This is just. No one will dispute it.”

Trials had never really caught on at the Britlingen Collective.

“Who-and what-have you brought with you?” asked the tall, veiled magician who had ushered them in on the day they’d departed. Every magician and mech in the room, even Narcissus’s new admirer, was electrified with excitement at Clovache’s demonstration.

“This is Amelia Earhart,” Batanya said, taking care to pronounce the name correctly. “She is a… She can operate a flying machine, and she left home, which was America, on Earth, in July of 1937.”

“A time traveler,” exclaimed the magician. His eyes, above the veil, were almost glowing with interest. “And that is surely Lucifer’s conjuring ball.”

“It’s the island. That one tiny island,” Batanya said. “That’s the key. Amelia landed on it by accident, and then as she explored the island, she found herself in Hell. The island is a portal of some kind. Once Amelia had come through, she could pass back, with the help of the conjuring ball. She took Clovache and the rest of us through. Then our homing spell finally worked, and we returned through the portal to land here. So the conjuring ball can take you through the portal, if you’re with someone who’s passed through it once.” Batanya couldn’t decide if her theory was complete nonsense or not. The magicians and mechs could study their magical hearts out and tell her their findings.

In the meantime, she would have happy daydreams of Trovis on a deserted Pacific island in 1937 in the middle of nowhere.

“If this proves to be true, you have experienced amazing magic,” the veiled magician told Amelia, who looked heartened by the greeting.

“Well, thank you very much, sir,” she said. “I’ll try to make myself useful. I don’t guess you can send me home? Not to the island.” She shuddered. “But to America? In my own time?”

“Not at this moment,” said another magician, “but maybe we can work on it with your help.”

“Sure,” Amelia said.

“Crick,” Flechette said, “we will take you to the medical rooms. Was your mission achieved?”

“Yes,” he said. He was glad of the two men who came to help him down the steps, but he turned to look back at Clovache and Batanya. “And I was very satisfied with the service.”

A week later, Batanya and Clovache had returned to their favorite courtyard to spar with each other. First they used weapons, then they wrestled. They were sweaty and limber and pleased with themselves when they were through, and though Batanya pointed out a few mistakes her junior had made, they sprawled on the grass in the sunlight in good harmony.

“How is Geit?” Batanya asked.

“Glad to see me again, and very vigorous in telling me so,” Clovache said, smiling to herself. “Did I hear someone knocking on your door at night?”

“Unexpectedly, yes.” Batanya grinned, which made her scar more obvious. But who cared?

“Do tell?”

“Our client,” Batanya said.

“Oh, my honor! Then you’ve experienced…”

“Oh, yes,” Batanya said, her voice rich with satisfaction.

“I didn’t get a very good look in Lucifer’s chamber,” Clovache said, “being in imminent danger and so forth. How is he all… arranged?”

“Very satisfactorily,” Crick said, dropping onto the ground beside Batanya.

“How are you today, Harwell Clansman?” she asked.

“Very well, Britlingen.” He smiled down at her. “But I have to go to Pardua to give Belshazzar his conjuring ball, now that I’m well enough to travel.”

“Will you be there long?”

“Depends on how much Belshazzar believes me.”

“What, do you need a sworn statement?” Clovache said. “We were there, we saw the conjuring ball, we saw you retrieve it, and in fact we came within a breath or two of losing our lives for it. Though it turned out to be quite handy, if you can concentrate. That’s all I did, you know, concentrate on where I wanted to go.”

“Ah, but am I taking Belshazzar the same conjuring ball that we retrieved?” Crick said. “That’s what he’ll wonder.”

Clovache gaped at him. “And why would you not?” she demanded. “Oh. Oh, it’s very valuable. But he commissioned you to steal it!”

“And what am I?”

“A thief,” Batanya said, without opening her eyes. “Dear Crick, you are a thief.” Her hardened hand slipped into his bony one.

After that, they all enjoyed the blue sky and the floating clouds, the light breeze that stirred their hair. Perhaps they were all thinking about how excited the magicians and the mechs had been when they’d seen the conjuring ball; how they’d peppered Crick with questions, most of which he couldn’t answer, about the ball’s properties and history and operation; how they’d disappeared with it for a few days, taking Amelia with them, to “make sure it still worked.”

“Be careful along the road, and come back when you can,” Clovache said, when she got up to take her gear into the castle.

“Oh, I will,” Crick said. He lay back in the green grass, smiling gently at Batanya. “I’m thinking of taking an apartment down the hill, in Spauling.”

“Really?” Batanya said. “That’s very interesting.” She was on her feet. “Invite me to the housewarming, will you?”

“You’ll be the only guest.”

Angels’ Judgment by Nalini Singh

Magic Mourns by Ilona Andrews

I sat in a small, drab office, one of many in the Atlanta chapter of the Order of Knights of Merciful Aid, and pretended to be Kate Daniels. Kate’s phone didn’t ring very often, so I didn’t have to pretend very hard.

Unfortunately, when it did ring, like right now, the person on the other end was rarely interested in a facsimile. They wanted the real thing.

“Order of Knights of Merciful Aid, Andrea Nash speaking.”

A female voice on the other end murmured hesitantly. “You’re not Kate.”

“No, I’m not. She’s on medical leave. But I’m filling in for her.”

“I’ll just wait until she comes back.”

I said good-bye to the disconnect signal, hung up, and petted my SIG-Sauer P226s lying on Kate’s desk. At least my guns still liked me.

The real Kate Daniels, my best friend and partner in butt-kicking, was on medical leave. And I intended to do my best to let her stay on medical leave, at least until her wounds stopped bleeding.

The magic wave fell. The mysterious orange and yellow glyphs on the floor of Kate’s office faded. On the wall, the charged air inside twisted glass tubes of a feylantern turned dark, while the ugly warts of electric lights in the hallway ceiling ignited with soft light. Inside my skin, the secret me stretched, yawned, and curled up for a nap, with her claws securely tucked away.

We lived in an uncertain world: magic flooded us in waves, screwed things up, and vanished. Nobody could predict when it came and went. One always had to be prepared. Sometimes though, no matter how prepared you were, the magic left something behind that you simply couldn’t handle, and then you called the police, and if they couldn’t help, you called the Order. The Order would send a knight, someone like me, who would help you with your magic problems. At least, that’s how it was supposed to work.

Very few people could have expertise in both tech and magic. Kate chose magic. I chose tech. Give me a firearm and silver bullets over swords and sorcery any day.

The phone rang again. “Order of Knights of Merciful Aid, Andrea-”

“Can I speak to Kate?” An older male voice tinted with country accent.

“I’m filling in for her. What do you need?”

“Can you take a message for her? Tell ’er this is Teddy Jo callin’ down from Joshua Junkyards. She knows me. Tell her I was drivin’ on through Buzzard, and I saw one of them fellers she hangs out with, the shapeshifters, run like hell through the Scratches. Right below me. There was a big dog chasin’ him.”

“How big was the dog?”

Teddy Jo mulled it over. “I’d say as big as a house. A one-story. Maybe a bit bigger. Not as big as one of them colonials, you understand. A regular-person house.”

“Would you say the shapeshifter was in distress?”

“Hell yeah, he was in distress. His tail was on fire.”

“He ran like his tail was on fire?”

“No, his tail was on fire. Like a big, furry candle on his ass.”

Bingo. Green five, shapeshifter in dire distress. “Got it.”

“Well, you tell Kate I said hello and not to be a stranger and all that.”

He hung up.

I grabbed my gun belt and sent a focused thought in the direction of Maxine, the Order’s secretary. I had no telepathic abilities whatsoever, but she was strong enough to pick up a thought if I concentrated hard enough. “Maxine, I have a green five in progress. I’m responding.”

“You have fun, dear. I hope you get to kill something,” Maxine’s voice said in my head. “By the way, do you recall that nice young man whose calls you aren’t taking?”

Raphael. He wasn’t exactly the type of man a woman would forget. “What about him?”

“He usually calls for you twice a day, at ten and at two. He hasn’t phoned today. At all.”

I killed a twinge of disappointment. “Perhaps he got the message.”

“Could be. Just thought you would like to be aware.”

“Thanks.” Raphael was trouble. And I had enough trouble as it was.

I picked up my favorite pair of P226s and ducked into the armory, where I kept my assortment of guns. As big as a house, huh? I took my Weatherby Mark V rifle off the rack, petting the hand-laminated fiberglass-and-Kevlar stock. A classic. When you absolutely have to have a job done correctly, use the best tool for it. There was only one weapon with more stopping power in the armory. Referred to as Big Unit by male knights, and Boom Baby by me, it sat in a glass case all by itself. Boom Baby ate Silver Hawks:.50 armor-piercing, incendiary, explosive, silver-load cartridges. To get Boom Baby out of its case, I’d have to show a lot of probable cause. That was fine with me. The Weatherby would more than do the job.

I grabbed.416 Remington Magnum cartridges and headed out the door, before somebody decided to stop me.

In our age, a woman could have a gasoline car, which worked only during tech, or a vehicle that ran on charged water, which worked only during magic. My Jeep was Order issue and equipped with an electric engine and a magic one, so it functioned during both tech and magic. Unfortunately, it didn’t function very well.

The engine started on the fourth try. I hopped in and steered out of the parking lot, joining a steady stream of riders and carts heading west. Mine was the only hoof-free transport on the street. The rest consisted of horses, mules, donkeys, and oxen.

The city lay in ruins. Heaps of dusty rubble and small mountains of broken glass marked the locations of once stately office buildings, ground to dust by magic’s relentless jaws. Atlanta grew around them. New apartment buildings, built by hand rather than machine, sprouted atop the carcasses of the old ones. Stone and wood bridges spanned the gaping drops of crumbled overpasses. Small stalls and open markets replaced Wal-Mart and Kroger. The old Atlanta might have fallen like the trunk of a great tree struck by lightning, but its roots were too strong to die.

I liked the city. I wasn’t born here, nor did I come to Atlanta by choice, but now the city was my territory. I had walked its streets, sampled its scents, and listened to it breathe. Atlanta wasn’t sure about me. It tried to kill me every now and then, but I was confident we’d come to an understanding eventually.

Forty minutes later I turned off the main road on James Jackson Parkway and followed it around the bend to Buzzard’s Highway. When magic was up, it flooded deep in this part of the city. Tall trees flanked the road, huge pines and dogwoods, still green despite the impending October. A twisted metal sign slid by: the white letters spelling out SOUTH COBB DRIVE, all but covered by BUZZARD scrawled in black paint. Pale wind chimes, made of turkey vulture skulls and string, hung from the tree limbs overshadowing the road. A cheerful welcome. Not quite sure what they were trying to tell me. My goodness, could it be some sort of a warning?

My Jeep slid onto an old bridge over the Chattahoochee River. The old maps claimed that heading north would bring me into Smyrna and turning southwest would deliver me to Mableton, but neither any longer existed.

I crossed the bridge and pulled over to the side of the road. A vast network of ravines lay before me. Narrow, twisted, some a hundred yards deep, although most were shallow, they tangled together and veered apart, like tunnels of a giant dirt-eating termite. Here and there remnants of the old buildings perched, halfway down the slopes, flanked by sickly brush. A highway cut through the ravines, running atop the cliff tops, interrupted with wooden patches of bridges. Above it all, black-winged vultures glided on the aerial currents.

The locals called it the Scratches, because from above the place looked like a giant buzzard had scratched in the dirt. The Scratches came into being after the very first flare, when the magic returned to the world in a three-day wave of disasters and death. With every magic wave, the ravines grew a little deeper.

Far to the south, the Scratches united into a gorge that eventually became Honeycomb Gap, another hellish magic spot. The highway itself served as the favorite drag-racing spot for idiot juvenile delinquents. Somewhere in this mess of soil and air was my green five, the shapeshifter in distress. Hopefully still alive and nursing a singed tail.

Atlanta housed one of the largest shapeshifter societies in the country. The Pack, as it was known, counted over fifteen hundred members, subdivided into seven clans according to their animal forms. An alpha couple ruled each clan. The fourteen alphas made Pack Council, presided over by Curran, the Beast Lord of Atlanta. Curran wielded unbelievable power and ultimate authority. He was the Alpha.

To understand the Pack, one had to understand the shapeshifters. Caught on the crossroads between animal and human, they could give in to either one. Those who surrendered to the animal side began the catastrophic descent into delirium. They reveled in perversion and cruelty and gorged themselves on human flesh, raping and murdering until people like me put them down like rabid dogs. They were called loups, and they were killed as soon as they were discovered.

To remain human, a shapeshifter had to live his life according to a very strict mental regimen detailed in the Code, a book of rules, which praised discipline, loyalty, obedience, and restraint. A shapeshifter knew no higher calling than to serve the Pack, and Curran and his Council took the idea of service a step further. All shapeshifters underwent martial arts training, both as individuals and in squads. All learned to channel their aggression, to handle being shot with silver bullets, to use weapons and firearms. Coupled with their numbers, their strict discipline, and their high degree of organization, having the Pack in the city was like living next to a thousand and a half highly skilled professional killers with enhanced senses, preternatural strength, and power of regeneration.

The Order found the Pack’s presence very troubling. The shapeshifters didn’t trust the Order, and rightfully so-the knights viewed each shapeshifter as a monster waiting to happen. So far Kate was the only agent of the Order who had managed to earn their trust, and they preferred to deal exclusively through her. Getting a shapeshifter out of a bind would go a long way toward improving my standing with both organizations. At least on paper.

I put the parking brake on and walked upwind from the Jeep. Hard to smell anything with the exhaust fumes searing the inside of my nose. Teddy Jo had probably exaggerated the dog’s size-eyewitnesses usually did-but even if it was as large as a “regular-person house,” finding it in the labyrinth of the ravines would prove tricky. The highway didn’t just run straight. It veered and split into smaller roads, half of which led nowhere; the other half ended up rejoining Buzzard.

I crouched on the edge of the ravine and let the air currents tell me a story. A touch of sickeningly sweet rot of decomposing flesh and the odd, slightly oily stink of vultures eating it. Twin musk of two feral cats enjoying a bit of competitive spraying over each other’s marks. A harsh bitterness of a distant skunk. The scent of burning matches.

I paused. Sulfur dioxide. Quite a bit of it, too. It was the only scent that didn’t fit the usual odors of animal life. I returned to the Jeep and followed the matches north. There were times when my secret self came in handy.

The stench of burning sulfur grew stronger. A low growl rolled through the ravine below, dissolving into heavy wet panting, followed by a frustrated layered yelp, as if several dogs had whined in unison.

I guided the Jeep along the edge of the ravine and peered down. Nothing. No giant dogs, just a shallow twenty-five-foot gap with a bit of scarce shrubs and trash at the bottom. A broken rusted fridge. The remains of a couch. Multicolored dirt-stained rags. A house had apparently thrown up down the slope and now perched in a ruined heap on the edge, where the ravine veered left.

An excited snarl rumbled through the Scratches, the deep primeval sound of an enormous beast giving chase. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I stood on the brakes, swiped the Weatherby from the seat, and jumped out, taking position on the edge.

A shaggy shape exploded from around the bend of the ravine. Saffron-colored with a sprinkling of dark spots on its sloped back, the animal flew over the refuse, the muscles of its powerful forequarters pumping hard. A bouda. Shit.

The werehyena saw me. A cackle of trilling terrified laughter exploded from its muzzle.

Please don’t be Raphael. Please don’t be Raphael. Please…

The bouda veered toward me, changing in midleap. Its body snapped, twisting like a broken doll. Bones thrust out of the flesh, muscles sliding up the new powerful limbs, a carved chest, and a humanoid torso. The beast’s jaws exploded, growing disproportionately large, its face flattened into a grotesque semblance of human, its forepaws stretched into hands that could enclose my entire head. A bouda in a warrior form, a monster halfway between hyena and man. For a shapeshifter, to assume this form was a victory, to make it proportional was an achievement, and to speak in one was an art.

The werehyena’s jaws gaped open, displaying three-inch fangs. A bloodcurdling scream ripped from him. “Drive away, Andrea! Drive!”

Raphael. Damn it.

“Don’t panic.” I sighted the bend through the scope. “I have it under control.” A thing that sent a bouda in warrior form running, especially one as crazy and lethal as Raphael, had to be treated with respect. Fortunately, the Weatherby delivered respect in a Magnum cartridge. It would stop a rhino at full gallop. It sure as hell would handle an oversized dog.

The ground shook as if from blows of a giant hammer. The refuse on the ravine’s floor jumped in place.

A colossal thing burst from around the bend, nearly level with the ravine’s wall. Blood-red and massive, it slid on the trash and crashed into the curve. The impact shook the slope. The remnants of a house quaked and slid down in a shower of bricks, bouncing from the creature’s three canine heads.

A twenty-foot-tall three-headed dog. Whoa. This was quite possibly the coolest thing I’d ever seen through the scope of a rifle.

The dog shook, flinging rubble from his fur. Thick, deep-chested, built like an Italian mastiff, it gripped the ground with four massive paws and charged after Raphael. Behind it a long whiplike tail lashed, the barb on its end shaped like a snake’s head. The mouths of its three heads hung open, displaying gleaming fangs longer than my forearm. Three forked serpentine tongues hung out as it thundered to us, flinging foam from between the horrid teeth. The drops of drool, each big enough to fill a bucket, ignited in midair.

It was built too thickly. The bullet might not penetrate.

However, I didn’t need to kill it. I just had to delay it long enough for the knucklehead to reach me. I sighted the muzzle of the center head. The nose shot would deliver maximum pain.

“Run, damn you!” Raphael howled, scrambling up the slope toward me.

“There’s no need to scream.” Excitement buoyed me, the ancient thrill of a hunter sighting his prey. The beast’s dark nose danced in my scope.

Steady. Aim. Breathe. You have time.

A triple snarl ripped from three huge maws.

Gently, slowly, I squeezed the trigger.

The Weatherby spat thunder. The recoil punched me in the shoulder.

The dog’s middle head jerked. The Weatherby’s magazine held two rounds and one in the chamber. I sighted and fired again. The middle head drooped. The beast yowled and spun in pain. Perfect. The Weatherby wins again.

In a desperate leap, Raphael launched himself up the slope toward me. I caught his arm and hauled him up. We dashed to the Jeep. I hopped into the driver’s seat, Raphael landed in the passenger’s, and I floored the gas pedal.

A howl of pure frustration shook the highway. In the rearview mirror the dog sailed out of the ravine as if it had wings and landed on the road behind us.

“Faster!” Raphael snarled.

I drove, squeezing every last drop out of the Jeep’s old engine. We hurtled down the highway at a breakneck speed. The dog gave chase with a triumphant howl that shook the ground beneath the car wheels. It closed the space between us in three great bounds and bent down over the car, its mouths opened wide. The foul, corrosive breath washed over me. Raphael jumped up and snarled back, his hackles up. Burning drool hit the backseat, singeing the upholstery in an acrid stench of melted synthetics.

I swerved, taking a sudden turn onto a wooden bridge and almost sending the Jeep off the edge into a gap. Monstrous teeth snapped a foot from the backseat.

The dog snarled. In the rearview mirror I saw its muscles bunch as it gathered itself for a leap. Before me, Buzzard’s Highway ran straight and narrow, ravines on both sides. Nowhere to go. That’s it, we’re done.

Inside me, an animal raked at my flesh, trying to spill out of my skin. I clenched my teeth and stayed human.

The dog jumped. Its huge body flew toward us and then jerked back, as if an invisible leash had snapped, reaching its full length. The giant canine fell, its paws waving clumsily in the air. In the rearview mirror I saw it rise. Its bark rang through the Scratches. The dog barked again, whined, and jumped back into the ravine.

I slowed to a speed that would let me make a turn without sending us to a fiery death in the gap below. “You! Explain!”

In the seat next to me Raphael shuddered. Fur melted into smooth human skin, stretched taut over a heartbreakingly beautiful body. Coal-black hair spilled from his head to his shoulders. He looked at me with smoldering blue eyes, smiled, and passed out.

“Raphael?”

Out cold. With magic down, changing shape took a lot of effort and combined with the strain of that run, Lyc-V, the shapeshifter virus, had shut him down for a rest.

I growled under my breath. Of course, he could’ve stayed conscious had he not changed into a human. But he knew that if he shifted shape, he would pass out on the seat next to me, nude, and I would be forced to stare at him until he slept it off. He had done it on purpose. The werehyena Casanova strikes again. I was getting really tired of his ridiculous pursuit.

Ten minutes later I pulled into an abandoned Shell station and parked under the concrete roof shielding the pumps.

I hugged my rifle and listened. No snarls. No growling. We were in the clear.

My heart hammered. I tasted a bitter patina on my tongue and squeezed my eyes shut. A delayed reaction to stress, nothing more.

Inside, my secret self danced and screamed in frustration. I chained it. Control. In the end it was all about control. I had learned to impose my will over my body in childhood-it was that or death-and years of mental conditioning in the Order’s Academy had reinforced my hold.

Breathe. Another breath.

Calm.

Gradually the bestial part of me settled down. That’s it. Relax. Good.

All shapeshifters struggled with their inner beast. Unfortunately, I wasn’t an ordinary shapeshifter. My problems were a lot more complicated. And the presence of Raphael only aggravated them.

Raphael sprawled next to me, snoring slightly. Until he awoke, speculating on why a giant three-headed dog with burning drool had chased after him would be pointless.

Look at him. Napping without a care in the world, confident I would be watching him. And I was. I had met handsome men in my life, some born with classically perfect features and the physique of Michelangelo’s David. Raphael was not one of these men, and yet he left them all in the dust.

He had his good qualities: the bronze skin, the masculine jaw, the wide sensuous mouth. But his face was too narrow. His nose was too long. And yet when he looked at women with those dark blue eyes, they lost all common sense and threw themselves at him. His face was so interesting and so… carnal. There was no other word for it. Raphael was all tightly controlled, virile sensuality, heat simmering just beneath the surface of his dusky skin.

And his body took my breath away. He was built lean, with crisp definition, proportionate and perfect with wide chest, narrow hips, and long limbs. My gaze drifted down to between his legs. And hung like a horse.

He had been kind to me, more kind than I probably deserved. The first time, when my body betrayed me, he and his mother, Aunt B, saved my life by guiding me back into my shape. The second time, when my back was pierced by silver spikes, he held me and talked me through pushing them out of my body. When I thought back to those moments, I sensed tenderness in him and I wanted very badly to believe it was genuine.

Unfortunately, he was also a bouda. They had a saying about werehyenas: fourteen to eighty, blind, crippled, crazy. Boudas would screw anything. I had witnessed it firsthand. Monogamy wasn’t in their vocabulary.

Raphael had seen the true me and he’d never come across anyone similar. To him I was the TWT-IHFB. That Weird Thing I Haven’t Fucked Before.

The more I thought about it, the madder I got. He could speak in a warrior form just fine. Had he stayed awake, I would’ve gotten the whole explanation from him by now. Not to mention that if something attacked us, I’d be left to defend a limp man who outweighed me by about eighty pounds. What exactly was I supposed to do with him? Did he expect me to sigh heavily while admiring his naked body? Or perhaps I was supposed to take advantage of the situation?

I reached into the glove compartment and got out a Sharpie. Taking advantage of the situation didn’t sound bad at all.

An hour later Raphael stretched and opened his eyes. His lips stretched in an easy smile. “Hey. Now that’s a beautiful sight to wake up to.”

I leveled my SIG-Sauer at him. “Tell me why the nice puppy was chasing you.”

He wrinkled his nose and touched his mouth. “Is there something on my lips?”

Yes, there is. “Raphael, concentrate! I know it’s hard for you but do try to stay on target. Explain the dog.”

He licked his lips and my thoughts went south. Andrea, concentrate! Try to stay on target.

Raphael remembered to look cool and leaned back, presenting me with the view of a spectacular chest. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me. First, what are you even doing here? Aren’t you supposed to dragging around giant rocks right now?” About six weeks ago, the lot of us had entered the Midnight Games, an illegal, to-the-death fighting tournament. We did it to prevent a war against the Pack. Both the Order and Curran, the Beast Lord, took a rather dim view of this occurrence. As a result, Kate was on medical leave, and the Beast Lord, who had actually ended up participating in the tournament with us, had sentenced himself and the rest of the involved shapeshifters to several weeks of hard labor building an addition to the Pack’s citadel.

“Curran released me due to family hardship,” Raphael said.

Not good. “What happened?”

“My mother’s mate died.”

My heart jumped. Aunt B was… she was kind. She saved my life once and she kept my secret to herself. I owed her everything. And even if I hadn’t, I felt nothing but respect for her. Among boudas, as in nature among hyenas, the females ruled. They were more aggressive, more cruel, and more alpha. Aunt B was all that, but she was also fair and smart and she didn’t tolerate any nonsense. When you’re the alpha of a bouda clan, you have a lot of nonsense thrown at you.

Had I grown up under Aunt B instead of the bitches who ruled my childhood, perhaps I wouldn’t be so messed up.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” Raphael said and looked away.

“How is she holding up?”

“Not that well. He was a very nice man. I liked him.”

“What happened?”

“Heart attack. It was quick.”

Shapeshifters almost never died of heart complications. “He was a human?”

Raphael nodded. “They’ve been together for almost ten years. She met him shortly after my father died. The service was set for Friday. Someone stole his body from the funeral home.” A low growl laced his words. “My mother didn’t get to say good-bye. She didn’t get to bury him.”

Oh God. I gritted my teeth. “Who took the body?”

Raphael’s face turned grim. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”

“I want in on it. I owe your mother.” Aunt B had a right to bury her mate. Or bury the thing that took her mate’s body. Either way worked for me.

He grimaced. “Did you smell matches?”

I nodded. “It’s the dog.”

“Yeah. I picked up this scent at the funeral home and trailed it here. There was something else under it, but the dog stink is so damn acrid, it drowns everything else.” Raphael gave me a hard look.

I motioned with my fingers. “Give.”

“I thought I smelled a vampire.”

A giant three-headed dog was bad news. A vampire was much, much worse. The Immortuus pathogen, the bacterial disease responsible for vampirism, killed its victim. Vampires had no ego, no self-awareness, no ability to reason. They had the mental capacity of a cockroach. Ruled by insatiable bloodlust, they killed anything that bled. If left to their own devices, they’d wipe out life on Earth and then cannibalize themselves. But their empty minds made a perfect vehicle for the will of a navigator, a necromancer, who piloted a vampire like a marionette, seeing through its eyes and hearing through its ears. Necromancers came in several varieties, the most adept of which were called Masters of the Dead. A vampire piloted by a Master of the Dead could destroy a platoon of trained military personnel in seconds.

And 99 percent of the Masters of the Dead were members of the People. The People were bad, bad news. Set up as a corporation, they were organized, wealthy, and expert in all things necromantic. And very powerful.

“Do you think the People stole the body?”

“I don’t know.” Raphael shrugged. “I thought I’d throw it out there, before you jump in with both feet.”

“I don’t care. Do you care?”

“Fuck no.” Raphael’s eyes glinted, making him look a bit deranged.

“Then we’re in agreement.”

We nodded to each other.

“So you tracked the sulfur scent here, then what?” I asked.

“I ran into Fido. He chased me into a crevice. I sat there for about an hour or so, and then he wandered off and I ran the other way. Apparently, he didn’t wander off far enough. What kind of creature is Fido, incidentally?”

“I have no idea.”

All of my training had been in contemporary applications of magic. I could recite the vampiric biocycle off the top of my head, I could diagnose loupism in early stages, I could correctly identify the type of pyromagic used from burn pattern, but give me an odd creature and I drew a complete blank.

“Who would know?” Raphael asked.

We looked at each other and said in unison, “Kate.”

Kate had a mind like a steel trap, and she pulled absurdly obscure mythological trivia out of her hair. If she didn’t know something, she would know who would.

I pulled a cell phone out of the glove compartment. There was only one functioning cellular network. It belonged to the military and as a knight of the Order and an officer of peace, I had access.

I stared at the phone.

“Forgot the number?” Raphael asked.

“No. Thinking how to phrase this. If I say the wrong thing, she’ll be dashing down to the ley line in minutes.” Kate had never met a person she didn’t want to protect, preferably by hacking at the hostile parties with her sword. But Kate was also human and needed the rest.

Raphael gave me a dazzling smile. My heart skipped a beat. “Could it be that you want some alone time with me?”

I dropped the safety off my gun.

He raised his hands palms out, still grinning like an idiot.

I put the safety back on and dialed the number.

“Kate Daniels.” My best friend’s voice filled my ear.

“Hey, it’s me. How’s your stomach?”

“Stopped hurting. What’s up?”

“I need to ID a twenty-foot-tall three-headed dog with blood-red fur and burning spit.” That’s right, routine, casual, business as usual, I encounter giant three-headed dogs every day…

A small silence filled the phone.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Everything is fine,” I assured her, smiling brightly at the phone, as if she could see me. “Just need an ID.”

“Does the tail look like a snake?”

I considered the long, whip-thin tail with a barb on the end. “Sort of.”

“Are you in the office?”

“No, I’m in our Jeep, out in the field.”

“Look under the passenger seat in a black plastic bin. There should be a book.”

Raphael hopped out, dug under the seat, and pulled out a dog-eared copy of The Almanac of Mystical Creatures.

“Got it,” I said into the phone.

“Page seventy-six.”

Raphael flipped the book open and held it up. On the left page a lithograph showed a three-headed dog with a serpent for a tail. The caption under the picture said CERBERUS.

“Is that your dog?” Kate asked.

“Could be. How the heck did you know the exact page?”

“I have perfect memory!”

I snorted.

She sighed into the phone. “I spilled coffee on that page and had to leave the book open to dry it out. It always opens to that entry now.”

I examined the dog. “It definitely looks similar. Ours was bigger.”

“Ours? Who is there with you?”

“Raphael.”

Kate’s voice snapped. “I’ll be in Atlanta in three hours. Where are you?”

“I said it’s nothing major.”

“Bullshit. You wouldn’t work with Raphael unless the Apocalypse was imminent and that was the only way to prevent it.”

Raphael put his hands over his face and shook, making choking sounds that suspiciously resembled laughter.

“Hardy har har,” I growled. “We’re completely fine on our own, thank you very much. If you want to help, tell me more about Cerberus.”

“He belongs to Hades, god of the Greek underworld, where souls spend their afterlife. His primary function is to guard the front entrance. Also Hades occasionally sends him on an errand, according to myths. He’s supposed to hate sunlight.”

“This one had no trouble with the sun. Can you think of any possible reason he would manifest?”

“Well, a defilement of Hades’ shrine might do it. But Hades didn’t exactly have shrines. The ancient Greeks were scared to death of him. They averted their faces when sacrificing to Hades. They refused to even say his name. So I’m not sure.”

“Thanks.”

“You sure you don’t need me to come?”

“Positive.”

“Call me if anything.”

I hung up and looked at Raphael. “Your mother’s mate, what was his name?”

“Alex Doulos.”

“Was he a Greek pagan?”

A frown twisted Raphael’s face. “I have no idea. It didn’t come up. We had a careful relationship. He didn’t try to be my dad and I didn’t try to be his son. We met at holiday dinners and talked about sports mostly. It was a safe topic. What are you thinking?”

I shook my head. “I’m trying very hard not to think anything. I’m just collecting data at this point. Did you see the way Fido fell?”

“Like he was on a leash and it ran out.” Raphael drummed a quick rhythm on the dashboard.

“It probably means he’s somehow bound to a specific area. I think we should go and look at it.”

“I’m game.” Raphael shivered. “I don’t suppose you have any spare clothes?”

“You should’ve thought of clothes before you decided to go human.”

The sinful smile was back. “I always dreamt of being naked with you. Couldn’t pass up the chance.”

I started the Jeep. “Could you get any more full of yourself?”

“I’m mostly interested in getting you full of me.”

The vision of being full of Raphael zinged through my brain, short-circuiting rational thought. “Come to think of it, there is something on your lips. Why don’t you use that side mirror over there to check it out?”

He glanced into the side mirror and stared, slack-jawed. His lips were solid black. A thick black line of guy liner outlined his deep-set eyes and a little black tear dripped down his left cheek-bone. He touched his cheek, stretching the skin to better examine the tear, his face a flat mask, glanced at me, and exploded with laughter.

***

I stood atop the Jeep’s hood and slowly swept the vast network of ravines with binoculars. The Jeep itself sat on the edge of a shallow gap, just beyond the spot where Cerberus almost took a bite out of our backseat. Raphael, still gloriously naked, sat in the passenger seat and plucked random Hades-related trivia from the book.

“A fun guy, this Hades. Apparently he bridenapped his wife.”

“Things were much simpler in ancient Greece if you were a god. I’m sure he got himself a harem of mistresses, too.” The wind swirled with Raphael’s scents: the light musk of his sweat, the delicious redolence of his skin… I was having trouble concentrating.

“No,” Raphael said, flipping a page. “Actually, Hades didn’t screw around. His wife was the daughter of Demeter, goddess of youth, fertility, and harvest. After Hades stole Persephone, Demeter refused to let the plants grow, starving everyone, and they had to reach a compromise: Persephone spends half of the year with him and half with her mother. The guy only had her for six months out of the year, and he still remained faithful. That must be some sweet sex right there.”

I took the binoculars down so I could roll my eyes. “Do you ever think of anything but sex?”

“Yes, I do. Sometimes I think of waking up next to you. Or making you laugh.”

I was beginning to regret this.

“Of course, I do occasionally get hungry…” he added. “And cold.”

A white speck caught my eye. I adjusted the binoculars. A house. A two-story colonial, seemingly intact, sitting in the bottom of a ravine. I could only see the roof and a small slice of the upper story.

Interesting.

“Kate was right: the Greeks lived in fear of this guy. Instead of speaking his name, they called him the Rich One, the Notorious One, the Ruler of Many, and so on. Despite his sour disposition, he was considered to be a just god. The one sure way to piss Hades off was to steal one of the shades-souls-from his realm or to somehow avoid death. This dude Sisyphus apparently finagled a way out of death a couple of times, and Hades had it and made him drag an enormous boulder up a mountain. Every time Sisyphus almost gets to the top, the boulder rolls down and he has to do it all over. Thus the term ‘Si syphean task.’ Huh. I never knew that’s where it came from.”

He showed me a page. On it a man and a woman sat side by side on simple thrones. To one side of the pair stood Cerberus. To the other an angel with black wings and a flaming sword.

“Who is that?”

“Thanatos. Angel of death.”

“Didn’t know the Greeks had angels.” I turned back to watching the house. And just in time, too. Cerberus trotted out of the ravine to the left of the house. I could barely see his back. He passed by the building and began to circle it.

“I see a house,” I said.

Raphael landed next to me with inhuman agility. I passed the binoculars to him and he straightened, almost a foot taller than me. Standing next to him was a trial: his scents sang through me, the warmth of his body seeped through my clothes, and his skin practically glowed. Everything about him said “mate” to me. It wasn’t rational. It was the animal me, and I had to be better than that.

“I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “Here is Fido. Going round and round. I wonder what’s in that house?”

“I wonder why he doesn’t just go in and get whatever it is.”

“I think we should find out. Andrea?”

“Yes?” I wished he would stop saying my name.

“Why are your eyes closed?”

Because you’re standing next to me. “It helps me think.”

I felt the heat wash over me and knew he had leaned to me. His voice was a soft masculine rasp, entirely too intimate. “I thought you were trying not to think.”

I opened my eyes and found the deep smoldering blue of his irises right next to me. I lifted my index finger and pushed his chest. He slid on the Jeep’s hood, distorted by the charged-water engine underneath, and had to jump off, landing with the grace of a gymnast on the ground.

“Personal space,” I told him. “I protect mine.”

He simply smiled.

“How do we get to the house with the dog making shark circles around it?” I asked.

“Fido doesn’t see that well,” Raphael said. “It took him a while to find the crevice where I was hiding before, and he had to sniff me out. We fool his nose by masking our scent, we can probably get close enough.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“The old-fashioned way.”

I sighed. “Which would be?”

Raphael shook his head. “You really don’t know?”

“No, I don’t.”

He trotted off to the side and dived into a ravine. I waited for a couple of minutes, and he emerged, carrying two dark objects, and tossed one of them to me. Reflexively I caught it even as the reek lashed my nostrils. A dead, half-decomposed cat.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Some people roll in it.” He grabbed the dog carcass and ripped it in a half. Maggots spilled. He shook them out. “I prefer to tear them and tie pieces on myself. But if you would prefer to rub it all over your skin, you can do that, too.”

All my fantasies of touching him evaporated into thin air with a small pop.

“Hunting one-oh-one,” he said. “Didn’t your pack ever do the hunts in Texas?”

“No. I wasn’t in that kind of pack.” And I had fought my way out of shapeshifter society before it was too late.

My face must’ve showed my memories, because he paused. “That bad?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Raphael reached to the backseat and pulled a roll of cord we kept there. He uncoiled a foot-long piece and tore the tough hemp rope like it was a hair. “You don’t have to do it,” he said. “I keep forgetting you’re not-”

Not what? Not normal? Not like him?

“-properly trained. I’ll be back shortly.”

He wasn’t better than me. Whatever he could handle, I could deal with as well.

I picked up the roll of twine. If I had been straight bouda, like my mother, I would’ve enjoyed all of the enhancements Lyc-V brought, but even though I wasn’t as strong as a regular shapeshifter, I could handle the damn rope. I tore a piece, sighed, and pulled the cat apart.

“It’s a good thing I’m part hyena,” I murmured, moving along the bottom of the ravine. Bits of the cat corpse dangled from me, strategically positioned on my limbs and suspended from a cord off my neck. To a human nose, all decomposition odors were similar, but in reality each corpse gave off its own specific scent just as it did in life. And this particular carcass reeked of something nauseatingly sour. “If I were a cat, I’d probably die of the stink and the sheer indignity.”

“You know who can’t handle it?” Raphael scrambled up the slope like a gecko. “Doolittle.”

“The Pack’s doctor?” Even carrying my Weatherby, I made it out of the ravine faster than he did. What I couldn’t match in strength, I made up in agility and speed.

“Yeah. Badgers are very clean. In the wild, foxes sometimes steal badger burrows by sneaking into them and crapping all over the place. The badger is so prissy, he’d rather dig a new burrow than clean his old one up. Doolittle will do open-heart surgery if he has to, but hand him a chunk of a putrid cadaver and he’ll run for the hills.”

An echo of a growl washed over us. He clamped his mouth shut. We’d reached the dog’s hearing range.

A few minutes later we went aground on the edge. Several ravines converged here, forming a gap almost wide enough to enclose a football field. The house sat in the center of the gap. Two stories high, with a row of white columns supporting a triangular roof, it looked at us with twin rows of windows blocked by dark shutters. Its black front door stood closed and so did the doors of the cellar on the left side. A ten-foot-tall fence topped with coils of barbed wire guarded the house.

As we watched, Cerberus trotted out of the ravine. He whined softly, spit dripping in burning clumps of foam from between his fangs, and inched toward the fence. The left head stretched on his shaggy neck and sniffed at the mesh. A blue spark jumped from the metal to his nose. Cerberus yelped, clawed the ground in frustration, and trotted off.

Electrified fencing. Peculiar. No wires stretched to the house, so the power must have come from inside. I strained and heard the faint hum of a generator.

The doors to the cellar rose slowly. Something squirmed beneath them, something pale. The right half of the cellar door fell open and a creature leapt into the open. Its gaunt, vaguely humanoid body had lost every iota of its hair and fat long ego. Thick, bloodless skin sheathed the dry cords of its muscles, every rib distinct beneath its leathery hide. Its stomach was hard and ridged. Huge yellow claws tipped the fingers of its hands and its long toes.

A vampire. And where there was a vampire, there had to be a navigator. I raised the binoculars to my eyes.

The vampire’s face was horrible, a death mask sculpted with human features devoid of emotion, intellect, and self-awareness. The creature paused, perched on the edge of the cellar entrance. It unhinged its maw, displaying twin sickles of yellow fangs, leapt straight up, and clutched on to the wall of the house like a fly. The vamp scuttled up the wall, ran along the dark roof to the white stub of the chimney, and hopped in like some nightmarish Santa.

We could possibly deal with the electric fence. But a vampire would prove problematic. We had no way of knowing how many of them were in that house. Two would present a challenge. Three would be suicide. Especially if magic hit.

“Andrea?” Raphael’s voice was a soft cloud of warmth in my ear.

I glanced at him. What?

“Did you like the thing I left for you?”

The thing? Oh. The thing. Shapeshifters had an odd way of courtship. Mostly it involved proving to your prospective mate what a stealthy and sleek operator you were by prancing in and out of her territory. Because all of the land belonged to the Pack overall, “territory” came to be defined as the potential mate’s house. Most shapeshifters broke in and left presents, but boudas had an odd sense of humor. They broke into the houses of their intended and played practical jokes.

Raphael’s father glued Aunt B’s furniture to the ceiling. Raphael’s uncle lock picked his way into Raphael’s aunt’s house, flipped all the doors around, and hung them back on their hinges so the handles were inside. In fine bouda tradition, Raphael somehow snuck away during the Midnight Games, broke into my apartment, and left me the thing.

“You want to know that now?” I hissed in a fierce whisper.

“Just tell me yes or no?”

“Do you really think this is the best time?”

His eyes flashed with red. “There might not be any other time left.”

I turned and saw Cerberus crouching in the ravine behind us. He stood there absolutely still, the three pairs of his eyes fixed on us with baleful fury.

I turned very slowly to Raphael.

“Did you like the thing?” he asked with quiet desperation.

“Yes. It was funny.”

He grinned, his face made unbearably handsome by the flash of his smile.

With a deafening growl, Cerberus charged us. Fur sheathed the monstrous bloom of Raphael’s jaws. I flipped on my back.

Cerberus’s center head dove at me, his black maw gaping, ready to swallow me whole.

I fired.

The first shot punched the back of the dog’s mouth. It yelped and I sank two more in the same spot. Flesh exploded and I saw sky through the hole where the back of the beast’s throat used to be. The head drooped down. I rolled clear just as an enormous paw clawed the spot where I had dropped. The smallest claw grazed my side and leg, ripping the clothes in a hot flash of pain.

I leapt to my feet. The left head dove for me and missed as Raphael launched himself into the air, slicing Cerberus’s nose with his claws. Cerberus jerked back and Raphael clutched on to his muzzle. The dog shook, but Raphael clung to it, flinging bloody chunks of dog flesh to the ground.

I backed up, reloading. Raphael carved huge clumps out of Cerberus’s muzzle in a frenzied whirl of fur and claws. Blood spurted in dark streams.

The right head snapped at him, great fangs clamping together like a bear trap. Raphael hooked his claws into the dog’s nose, dropped out of the way, swung his legs like a gymnast on a pommel horse, and smashed his clawed feet into Cerberus’s right head.

I snapped the Weatherby up, anticipating Cerberus’s recoil.

The huge head swung back, as if in slow motion, the ruby eye clear and bright.

Steady. Aim.

An ancient tie stretched between Cerberus and me, vibrating like a live wire. The bond between the hunter and her prey.

The head reared higher and higher.

I have time.

I fired.

Blood burst from the back of Cerberus’s head. The head jerked straight up, its nose pointing to the sky. Fire leaked from its ruined orbit. The flames surged, engulfing the head. As it crashed down, bouncing once on the hard dirt, Raphael leapt to the ground. Behind him the last head shuddered and fell, catching the flames. Raphael straightened, a dark demonic figure silhouetted against the orange fire, his eyes two points of red light.

If I weren’t a trained professional, I’d have fainted from the sheer overload of his badassness.

I pointed my rifle straight up, resting the butt against my hip, and put on my Order face. Move along, nothing to see here, I do this every day. I thought of blowing imaginary smoke from the rifle barrel, but the Weatherby was long and I’m barely five feet four, so I’d look pretty stupid.

Raphael strode to me. His voice was a ragged growl torn to tatters by his fangs. “Are you alright?”

I nodded. “A bit scratched up. Nothing major.”

We walked away, slowly, trying to maintain our coolness. A greasy stench of charred flesh tainted the air currents.

“That was a hell of a shot,” Raphael said.

“Thank you. That was a stunning display of hand-to-hand.”

We killed a damn Cerberus. Kate would turn green with envy.

Then the magic wave drowned us, and we paused in unison as it penetrated our bodies, awakening the inner beasts.

A bright blue glow surged from the ground. It flashed and vanished-the ward, a strong magic barrier, going active. Approaching the house during magic would be problematic. We’d have to somehow break through the ward.

A ghostly white light ignited in the wall right in front of us. It struggled free of the house and approached us, moving in sharp jerks. Its fuzzy radiance halted just before reaching the boundary of the ward and solidified into a translucent older man with kind eyes and pale hair.

I jumped back and snapped my gun up on reflex. Not that it would do anything with magic up.

A grimace strained the ghost’s face, as if he were pulling a great weight. “Raphael,” he gasped. “Not safe…”

A spark of magic snapped from the house. It clutched the ghost and jerked him back into the wall. Raphael lunged at the ward. The defensive spell flashed with blue, twisting a snarl of pain from his lips. I grabbed him and pulled him back.

“Is that Doulos? Your mother’s mate?”

He nodded, fury boiling in his eyes. “We must get him out!”

An odd sucking sound rolled behind us. I looked over my shoulder. Inside the ball of flames, Cerberus’s skeleton rose upright. The fire flared once more and vanished, snuffed out like a candle. Flesh spiraled up the colossal bones. Oh shit.

“Run!” Raphael snarled. We dashed down the ravine.

We were halfway to the wall when the first growl announced the hellhound giving chase.

“And you’re sure Doulos was dead?” I drove like a maniac through Atlanta ’s troubled streets. Next to me Raphael licked a burn on his arm.

“He was embalmed. Yeah, pretty sure.”

“Then what was that?”

“I don’t know. A shade? A soul on its way to Hades?”

“Is that even possible?”

“We’ve been almost eaten by a giant three-headed dog. There is not a hell of a lot that I consider not possible at this point. Watch out for that cart!”

I threw the wheel to the right and barely avoided a collision with a teamster, who flipped me off. “We need a bigger gun.”

“We need a shower,” Raphael said.

“Gun first. Shower later.”

Ten minutes later I walked into the Order’s office. A group of knights standing in the hallway turned at my approach: Mauro, the huge Samoan knight; Tobias, as usual dapper; and Gene, the seasoned former Georgia Bureau of Investigations detective. They looked at me. The conversation died.

My clothes were torn and bloody. Soot stained my skin. My hair stuck out in clumps caked with dirt and blood. The reek of a dead cat emanated from me in a foul cloud.

I walked past them into the armory, opened the glass case, took Boom Baby out, grabbed a box of Silver Hawk cartridges, and walked out.

Nobody said a thing.

Raphael waited for me in the Jeep, a spotted monster smeared with blood and dirt. A fly apparently had fallen in love with a spot on his round ear, and he kept twitching it. I put Boom Baby in the backseat and hopped into the driver’s seat. Raphael yawned, displaying a pink mouth bordered with thick conical fangs. “Big gun.”

“Where do you want me to drop you off?”

The hyena man licked his lips. “Your apartment.”

“Ha. Ha. Seriously, where?”

“Your face was exposed when we fought the dog and later when we spoke to Alex’s shade. The bloodsucker saw you, which means the navigator would’ve seen you through its eyes. It’s likely the navigator knows who you are. It’s equally likely he’s doing something he isn’t supposed to in that ravine. Last I checked, stealing corpses was illegal.”

Stealing corpses was very much illegal. With magic making new and interesting things possible, the lawmakers took theft of cadavers extremely seriously. In Texas, you got more time in a forced-labor camp for stealing a corpse than you got for armed robbery.

Considering the remote location and the electric fence, it was highly likely someone was up to no good. If it had been a legitimate operation of the People, we would’ve been approached by a human or vampiric sentry. Because of our law enforcement status, all navigators knew the knights of the Order by sight and recognized that we were an annoyingly persistent lot. The People would’ve made contact to convince me they weren’t involved in anything illegal and get me to go away.

Since they didn’t, either whatever was taking place in that house was too dirty for the People to admit their ownership of it, or it didn’t involve the People at all. The second possibility meant greater danger. For all of their nauseating qualities, the People were tightly regulated and mostly law-abiding. For now, anyway. They wouldn’t dare to attack a knight of the Order, knowing that the consequences would be public and painful. But a rogue navigator armed with a vampire had no such compunction.

Raphael’s thoughts ran along the same lines. “The navigator will want to silence you before you create a paper trail he can’t destroy. You might end up hosting a bloodsucking party tonight. So we go to your apartment, take what you need, and then go to my place. He didn’t see me except in bouda form.”

“Absolutely not.”

Raphael twitched his nose. “Are you so scared to stay with me that you’d actually prefer to be ripped apart by a couple of vampires?”

“I’m not scared of you.”

His lips stretched back in a nightmarish smile, exhibiting a wall of teeth capable of snapping a cow’s femur in half like a toothpick. “I promise to keep my hands, tongue, and other body parts to myself. You risk your life by staying home. It’s late and we’re both too wiped out to go climbing into the People’s lair tonight. What do you risk by coming with me?”

“A huge migraine from being in your company.” Try as I might, I couldn’t find any fault with his reasoning. It was logically sound. And I wanted to see his place. I practically itched with curiosity.

“I’ll share my aspirin,” he promised.

“And that’s all you will share. I mean it, Raphael. Touch any part of me with any part of you without permission and I’ll put bullets into you.”

“I understand.”

It took me almost ten minutes of chanting to start the Jeep. Equipped with an enchanted water engine in addition to its gasoline one, the Jeep managed to attain the speed of nearly forty miles per hour during the magic wave, which in itself was an enormous achievement of magic manipulation. Unfortunately, it suffered from the illness affecting every magic-capable vehicle: it made noise. Not the typical mechanical noise of an engine either. No, it snarled, coughed, roared, and belched thunder in its effort to attain sonic supremacy, so all conversation had to be carried out at a screaming level. I kept quiet and Raphael napped. When a tired shapeshifter wants his rest, you could fire cannons next to him. He won’t care.

A few minutes later we pulled up before my apartment. Raphael followed me up the stairs, dimly lit by the pale blue glow of feylanterns, and sauntered into my living room. I opened the side door leading to one of the two bedrooms, which I used for storage, and heard Raphael suck in the air through his nostrils.

I glanced up and saw the thing. He had left it in the living room, but I kept bumping into it and eventually moved it here, to a corner by the barred window. A six-foot-tall metal chandelier-like contraption made of thin brass wire, the thing stretched from the ceiling to the floor, rotating slowly. Branches of wire stuck out from it and on the branches little glass ornaments shimmered, suspended on golden chains. The ornaments contained thongs.

“You kept it,” he said softly.

I shrugged. I actually hadn’t taken into account the effect it might have on him. A miscalculation on my part. “It beats digging for my underwear in the drawer.”

His eyes widened. “Are you wearing one now?”

“Mind out of my pants!” I ordered. “One more infraction, and I’m staying home.”

He said nothing. I grabbed a blue duffel bag and went about the bedroom collecting equipment. My travel kit: spare toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, deodorant. Crossbow bolts in neat bundles, their broadheads safely wrapped in soft wool in a box. Sharpshooter IV, a nice light crossbow. I pulled open the dresser and plucked a few boxes of ammo from it. Silver point.

“You’re the only woman I know who keeps bullets in her dresser,” he said.

“I use this room for storage.”

“There are bullets in the other dresser, too,” he said.

I suppose it was inevitable. He was a man, a bouda, and he had access to my apartment. It would be impossible for him not to have examined the contents of my dresser. At least he didn’t write on it in a big red marker, RAPHAEL WAS HERE.

“I like to be prepared. I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night, empty my clip into some crazed shapeshifter sneaking about my apartment, and then have to run around looking for more ammo when he doesn’t stay down.”

Raphael winced.

If he knew I had lied about the thing, he wouldn’t be wincing. He’d be grinning ear to ear. I wasn’t sure myself why I had kept it, except that it must’ve taken him hours to assemble it all, and it would’ve required nearly godlike ninja skills to slip away from the strict security of the Midnight Games to set it up. He went through all that trouble for me. I couldn’t throw it away.

Having filled my duffel with weapons of destruction, I headed to my bedroom and shut the door in his face when he tried to follow. He didn’t need to see me pack my spare underwear.

I packed a change of clothes and paused. I was incredibly filthy. Incredibly disgustingly filthy. I had to take a shower either here, where I had my shampoo and my soap, or in Raphael’s apartment. I grabbed a change of clothes and a firearm and stepped out of the room. “I’m going to shower. Stay out of my bathroom.”

“Okay.”

I got into the bathroom, slid the tiny deadbolt closed, and heard him lean on the wall next to it. “I’ve seen you naked, you know,” he said. “Twice.”

“Near-death experiences don’t count,” I said, stripping off my clothes and trying not to think of Raphael holding me firmly and whispering soft encouragements in my ear, while Doolittle had cut silver out of my body. Some memories were too dangerous to carry around.

When I emerged, clean, dressed, and smelling mostly of coconut with only mere traces of dead cat, I found Raphael examining the photographs on my shelf. Short little me and my mother, a petite blonde, standing side by side.

“You’re about eight?” he guessed.

“Eleven. I was always small for my age. Weaker than everyone else.” I touched the photograph gently. “In the wild, hyena cubs are born with functioning eyes and teeth. They start fighting the moment they’re born, and the stronger female tries to kill her sisters. Sometimes the weaker girls get too scared to nurse and die of starvation. The adults try to stop it, but hyena cubs will dig tunnels, too small for adults to enter, so they’ll fight to death there.”

“Boudas don’t dig tunnels,” Raphael said softly.

“You’re right. They don’t have to hide their violence from adults either.” They just try to beat you to death in the open. They do it right in front of your mother because they know she can’t protect you.

I reached into the frame and pulled out a small photograph resting behind it. The man on it hunched over oddly, nude, yet still dappled with faint outlines of hyena spots. His arms were too thickly muscled, his face too heavy on the jaws, its skin darkening at the nose. His round eyes were solid black.

Lyc-V, the virus that created shapeshifters, infected humans and animals alike. Very rarely it produced an animal-were, a creature who started his life as an animal and gained the ability to turn human. Most didn’t survive the transformation. Of the rare few who did, the majority suffered from severe retardation. Mute and stupid, they were universally reviled. The human shapeshifters killed them on sight. But once in a while, an animal-were turned out to be intelligent, learned to speak, and could express his thoughts. And even more rarely, he could breed.

I was the product of a mating between a female bouda and a hyenawere. My father was an animal. The shapeshifters called people like me “beastkin.” And they killed us. No trial, no questions, nothing but immediate death. That’s why I hid my secret self deep inside and never let her out.

Raphael’s clawed, furry hand rested on my shoulder gently.

I wanted him to hold me. It was a completely ridiculous feeling. I was an adult, more capable than most of protecting myself, yet as he stood there next to me, I had the heartbreaking longing to be held almost like a child, to draw strength from him. Instead I shrugged off his hand, slid the photograph back into the frame, and headed for the door.

“Home, sweet home,” Raphael growled, pointing to a beautiful two-story brick townhome.

“Yours?”

He nodded. It was a lot of house and it looked quite dignified from the outside. Considering his Casanova tendencies, the inside was likely to feature heart-shaped vibrating beds and disco balls.

“What is it you do, Raphael?”

“This and that,” he murmured.

I had run a background scan on him when he first came on to me, but aside from his first name and his status as the only child of Aunt B, the alpha of Clan Hyena, nothing came up. He belonged to the upper level of the Pack’s command and his records were sealed. To dig deeper, I needed a warrant.

However, I had also made some inquiries with a couple of female boudas. His name was Raphael Medrano. The Pack owned a number of businesses, and Raphael ran one of them: Medrano Extractors. When magic brought down a structure, it ground concrete to useless powder, but it left the metal behind. The extractors went in and salvaged what could be saved and then sold it to the highest bidder or bought it themselves. The job carried a high level of danger, but with half of the world in ruins, Raphael wouldn’t be out of a job anytime soon.

He took my duffel, unlocked the door, and held it open for me while I carried Boom Baby inside. The door opened into a spacious living room with a vaulted ceiling. The floor was wood, the rug plain and beige, matching an oversized soft sofa diligently guarded by a blocky dark wood coffee table. A flat screen hung on the wall, angled toward the couch. Massive cubes of wooden shelves lined the opposite wall, housing books and DVDs.

The walls were custom painted in a light-brown-and-gray pattern resembling stone. No pictures decorated them; instead, Raphael displayed weapons: swords and knives in every shape and size imaginable. The place was clean, neat, and uncluttered, free of knickknacks and throw pillows. A very masculine house. Like stepping into the lair of some medieval lord with a penchant for frequent dusting.

Raphael locked the door. “Make yourself comfortable. My fridge is your fridge. I’m off to shower.”

I placed Boom Baby under the window for easy access in case of emergency and sat on the couch. Above me the soothing noise of the shower announced Raphael scrubbing himself clean. He’d napped on the way to the Order, so he would likely manage the transformation without passing out. The thought of naked human Raphael in the shower was terribly distracting.

Suddenly I was so tired.

I crawled off the couch and forced myself into the kitchen. Eating Raphael’s food was out of the question. Shapeshifters attached a special significance to food. A shapeshifter approaching his or her mate would try to feed them. That’s how Kate got burned once: the Beast Lord of Atlanta, the Pack’s head alpha and the final authority, fed her some chicken soup. She ate it, having no clue what it meant, which, according to her, the Beast Lord found incredibly amusing. Curran had a peculiar sense of humor. Cats. Weird creatures.

I tried the phone. No dial tone. The magic was still up.

I went back to the sofa and closed my eyes just for a moment.

The enticing aroma of meat tickled my nostrils. My eyes snapped open. Raphael, clean and mind-numbingly gorgeous, stood in the kitchen, trimming a piece of steak.

My mouth watered, and I wasn’t sure if it was the man or the steak that caused the reaction. Probably both. I was so hungry. And I so deeply wanted Raphael. I should’ve never come here.

Raphael glanced at me, his eyes like blue fire. My heart actually skipped a beat. “I’m cooking you dinner,” he said. “Shocking.”

“You know I can’t take that from you,” I said.

“Why not?”

I shook my head.

He casually flipped the knife in his fingers. His knife skills were uncanny. A flash of irritation flared in his eyes. He hesitated. “Look, I know you’re starving. If you won’t let me cook for you, will you at least cook for yourself?”

That was the first time I had ever seen him irritated. I pushed off the couch. “Sure.”

He opened the fridge. A complicated web glistened in the back of it, gathering into a knot in the corner. An ice spider. It cost an arm and a leg. I, like most other normal people, had to buy friz-ice from the Water and Sewer Department to keep my fridge from getting warm when the tech failed and magic robbed it of electricity.

Raphael pulled another steak and slapped it on the cutting board next to his. “Here.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

We stared at each other for a second, and then I took the saltshaker and began to season my steak.

We glided in the small space of the kitchen, boxed in by the island and counters like two dancers, never touching each other, until we ended up next to each other searing our steaks on twin burners.

“I would just like to know if I have a chance,” Raphael ground out. “I’ve been patient.”

“And I owe you something because of that?”

He glared at me. “I just want an answer. Look, it’s been half a year now. I call you every day-you don’t take my calls. I try to meet you and you blow me off. But you look at me like you want me. Just tell me yes or no.”

“No.”

“Is that your answer or are you refusing to tell me?”

“My answer is no. I won’t sleep with you. I’ve never led you on, Raphael. I told you from the beginning this wasn’t going to happen.”

Raphael’s eyes went dark. “Fair enough. Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, why? I know you want me. I see it in your face, I smell it in your body, I hear it in your voice. That’s why I kept coming back after you like a fucking idiot. At least you can tell me why.”

I unclenched my teeth. This talk was almost six months in coming. “Your mother is a good person, Raphael. Her clan is a good clan. But it’s not like that everywhere. My mother was the weakest of six females in a small bouda clan. The others beat her every day. There were only two males and my mother didn’t get to mate. Hell, if one of them looked at her, the others attacked her. In other places boudas don’t stick that strictly to the Code. There’s no Beast Lord to hold them to it and no punishment. They get to govern themselves, and the pack’s only as good as the alpha. You know what my first memory is? I’m sitting in the dirt and our fucking alpha, Clarissa, is beating my mother in the face with a brick!”

He recoiled.

“My mother didn’t want to mate with my father. They forced her to do it, because they got off on the perversity of it. He didn’t know any better. He didn’t understand the concept of rape. All he knew was that there was a female and she was made available to him. For three years my mother was raped by a man who had started his life as a hyena. He had the mental capacity of a five-year-old. And when I was born, they started beating me as soon as I could walk. I was beastkin. No rules applied to me. Under your precious Code, I was an abomination. Every bone in my body was broken before I turned ten. As soon as I healed, they started on me again. And my mother couldn’t stop it. She could do nothing. They would’ve killed me, Raphael. I was weaker and smaller than them and they would’ve kept beating me and beating me until there was nothing left, if my mother hadn’t gotten together what little shreds of courage she had left. I live now because she grabbed me and ran across the country.”

His face turned bloodless, but now it was too late to stop.

“When Kate drove me to the flare to your mother, I kept trying to get out of the cart, because I was sure Aunt B would kill me. That’s what ‘bouda’ means to me, Raphael. It means hate and cruelty and disgust.”

I shoved my pan off the fire to save the half-burned steak.

“So you refuse to be with me because of what I am,” he said. “You can’t be that shortsighted. What happened to you was awful. But I’m not them. I would never hurt you. My family, my clan, we would never hurt you. We protect our own.”

“What you are is only a part of it. If you were a different man, maybe I could get over it. But you’re a typical bouda male. I want love, Raphael. I might not deserve it, after some of the stuff I’ve done, but I want it. I want security and kindness and a home. I want monogamy and consideration for my feelings. What do you have to offer me? You’ve slept with every bouda woman who isn’t related to you. Everybody had you, Raphael. They offered to give me pointers on what you like in bed. Hell, you didn’t stop with boudas. You played with wolves, and with rats, with jackals… To you, I’m just another weird thing to hump. For God’s sake, you got stuck inside a jackal girl while you were both in beast form and they had to call Doolittle out to separate you two. What were you thinking? You outweighed her by a hundred and fifty pounds and you aren’t even of the same species!”

“I was fourteen,” he snarled. “I didn’t know any better. She wiggled her ass in front of me…”

“You’re like a greedy kid in an ice cream store. You want everything and so you make this giant rainbow mess of a cone and gorge yourself on sweets until you can’t even think anymore. You have no restraint and no discipline. Why would I want to get involved with you? So the next time someone wiggles her ass before you, you’ll take off like a rocket? Please.”

I grabbed a fork, stuck it into my steak, and marched out of the kitchen, carrying off my charred piece of meat. I got outside, climbed in my Jeep, and realized I had left my guns and my keys inside. There was nothing left to do but chew on my steak. I really wanted to cry.

I was so screwed up. I tried so hard to be a human, and he unhinged me. I just fell apart like a doll. The beatings, the humiliation, the fear-I had left those things in the past. I had interacted with other boudas and never once had been bothered by them. But with him all of it came flooding back in a choking painful wave.

Only Kate, the boudas, and the Beast Lord knew what I was. If the Pack found out that I was beastkin, the Beast Lord would protect me from physical harm. Curran had considered the issue of beastkin and come to the conclusion that he wouldn’t tolerate genocide against us. But at least some of the shapeshifters would still despise me. If the Order found out what I was, they would expel me. The Order took a dim view of monsters in their ranks unless they were fully human.

Years of hiding, first in adolescence, then during the gruel ing training at the Order’s Academy, stressed to my limit, tortured physically and mentally, hammered into shape, into a new me, then service in the name of the Order. I had rigidly maintained my humanity and composure through it all, and what undid me? Raphael, with his blue eyes and warm hands and voice that made me want to press against him and purr…

How could I have fallen for a damn bouda?

I slumped forward and rested my head on the steering wheel. Why did I tell him all that? What possessed me? I should’ve just laughed off his dinner invitation. But it had been eating at me for months now and I just couldn’t help myself. There was this bitter emptiness inside me and it made me want to scream, It’s not fair! and I didn’t even know why.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that I wanted to wake up next to Raphael. It wasn’t fair that he was a bouda. It wasn’t fair that for eleven years boudas tortured me and my mother.

Half an hour later Raphael emerged onto the porch and held open the door. Remaining in the Jeep was childish. Even storming out in the first place was childish. I took my fork, hopped out of the Jeep, and went inside with as much dignity as I could muster.

Raphael closed the door behind me. An odd light played in his eyes. He grabbed me by my shoulders and pulled me to him.

The breath jumped out of my lungs.

His stare was hard. “You will give us a chance.”

“What?”

“Things happened before I met you and before you met me. Those things don’t matter. You had no control over your past, but here, right now, you control the situation and you’re voluntarily giving it up. You’re punishing both of us because of something that happened half a lifetime ago. It makes no sense.”

I tried to pull away, but he held me.

“There hasn’t been anyone since I met you. I’ve been good, and don’t think for a moment it was because of the lack of wiggling asses. Have you ever seen me with another woman since we met? Have you heard of me being with another woman? The same women who wanted to give you pointers will tell you that I haven’t touched anyone since I saw you. Are you jealous of them? Is that it?”

My face went hot and I knew I had flushed. I was jealous of them. Of all of them.

“Andrea, you can’t be jealous of someone I met before I knew you. I didn’t know you existed back then. I don’t want anyone else now. Has there been anybody for you?”

I shook my head.

“I think of you a lot. Do you think of me, Andrea? Don’t lie to me.”

“Yes!” I snarled, my face burning. “Yes, I do! All the time. I can’t get you out of my head. I wish I could!”

He hugged me so hard, my bones nearly crunched. “You’ve made yourself into a new person and so have I. We deserve a fucking chance. I want you and you want me. Why aren’t we together? I’ll deal with your hang-ups if you’ll deal with mine, but if you’re still too scared to even try, then you’re not worth waiting for. I have some goddamn pride left and I won’t wait forever.”

He let me go.

I could either take control of it now or walk out. I clenched my teeth. This was my decision. I owned it, I took full responsibility for it, and no memories would make me cower and run away from him. I was worth it, damn it. He was worth it.

I did what I had wanted to do since I first saw him. I dropped my fork and kissed him.

We never made it upstairs to the bedroom.

The problem with falling asleep wrapped in a comfy blanket on the floor between the coffee table and the sofa is that in the morning, when the phone rings and wakes you up, you forget the coffee table is there. At least Raphael did. There was a solid thud as he sat up, smashing his head against the table, and then a string of foul curses as he staggered into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

“It’s for you!”

I got up, wrapped the blanket about myself like a cape, and went to get the phone.

“Aha!” Kate’s voice said on the other end.

“Aha what?”

Raphael must’ve recovered from his unfortunate connection with the table, because he set about trying to steal my blanket.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” Miss Innocence said.

“How did you get this number anyway?” I smacked Raphael’s hand away.

“Jim gave it to me a long time ago. I tried your cell, the Order, and your house. This was the next logical number. I’m a trained detective, you know.”

“You couldn’t detect your way out of a shoe if someone lit the way with neon signs.”

Raphael finally won the battle for the blanket and molded his body against mine, nipping gently at my neck. “Hold on a minute.”

I covered the phone and turned to him. “About dealing with my hang-ups-this is one of them. I’m on the phone. Please let me be.”

He sighed and went about the kitchen getting eggs out.

“I’m here,” I said, pulling my blanket back up.

“How did it go with Cerberus?”

I briefly sketched it for her. “Even if destroyed, he continues to remanifest as soon as the magic is up. He’s bound to that house. I’ll be talking to the People today about the vampire. I doubt they’ll tell me anything.”

“How important is this?”

I explained about Aunt B.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“Ghastek owes me a favor,” Kate said. “I have it on paper, signed in the presence of witnesses. Call him on it.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s the least I can do. Say, how did you even get into this mess?”

“Some man called Teddy Jo called it in.”

Kate hesitated. “Be careful with Teddy Jo,” she said softly.

“Why?”

“I don’t have anything solid, but there is something that bothers me about Teddy. Just watch him carefully if he ever shows up.”

I hung up. After Nataraja, the head of the People in Atlanta, Ghastek was the most talented of the Masters of the Dead. And also the most dangerous.

“Are you off the phone?” Raphael inquired mildly.

“Yes.”

A hint of danger added edge to his smile. “Good.”

When one says “pounce,” most people typically think of a cat. Maybe a dog. But none of them can manage to pounce quite as well as a horny male werehyena.

It took us nearly forty-five minutes to get out of the house, partly because Raphael had jumped me and partly because I had lingered. I lay next to him, wrapped in his arms, and tried to sort it out, and all the while my brain feverishly pulled apart my emotions, the secret creature inside me purred and snuggled up to Raphael, blissful in her simple happiness.

Raphael went all out: black jeans, black T-shirt, black jacket, enough knives to fight off a gaggle of ninjas. At least he didn’t wear leather, or we would’ve caused a slew of traffic accidents.

He had also called his mother. During his life, Alex Doulos was a Greek pagan, and he did worship Hades. Aunt B didn’t know the particulars. Raphael didn’t mention that her mate’s shade was trapped behind a ward by some sort of necromancer. We both agreed that she could be spared that knowledge.

“What’s bothering you?” Raphael asked, as I slid the Jeep into traffic. The magic had dropped again during the night. At least we could speak without yelling over the roar of the water engine. “Was the morning not good for you?”

He was worried. If he knew how completely he’d blown my socks off, his head would swell to twice its normal size. I tried my best not to laugh. “Sex, it’s what for breakfast.”

“Seriously?”

“It was great.” The best I ever had, but he didn’t need to know that. “Couldn’t you tell?”

“You never know. Women are more complicated.” He shook his head. “If not that, then what is it? You have that pinched look on your face.”

“Aren’t men supposed to be bad about reading women’s faces?”

Raphael sighed. “Not when they are reading the face of a woman they’ve obsessed over for the last six months. Tell me.”

I didn’t say anything. He would think less of me if I did.

“This is one of my hang-ups,” he said. “I’ll keep asking you what’s wrong until you tell me.”

Fair enough. “I’m a professional,” I said. “I went through the training, got knighted, the whole thing. I have decorations for meritorious service. But I have to rely on Kate to get the People to talk to me. It bothers me.”

He waited for more.

“Back in Texas, my partner and I took out a group of loups. My partner caught Lyc-V and went loup. I killed her. The Order tested me, but I got the all clear.”

“How did you manage that? The virus is in your blood.”

“I had a silver ring implanted under my skin in my arm just below the armpit. It pinched off my blood supply and then I shot liquid silver into my veins. It killed the virus. I cut my wrist to bleed out the dead virus cells, and the ring kept Lyc-V from the rest of my body from entering my arm.” The mere memory made me want to curl in pain.

“That was insanely dangerous. You could’ve lost your arm.”

“I almost did. But the blood work came back clear, and the amulet in my skull, the one you pulled out during the flare, kept my magic from leaking into an m-scan. I was given a clean slate, but they still shipped me off to Atlanta. Ted Monahan, the knight-protector, put me on the back burner. Before coming here, I was on the way to becoming Master-at-Arms, Firearm.”

Raphael nodded. “I take it that’s a big deal.”

“Very. I had all of my security briefings, passed all of the tests. All that remains is the formal nomination from my chapter’s knight-protector. But Ted will never do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because he senses there is something wrong with me. He isn’t sure what, and until he figures it out, I’m the only knight without any active cases. I don’t even have an office.”

Raphael’s jaw took on a stubborn set. I had seen it before a few times, and I knew what it meant. “I know that look.”

He turned a dazzling smile at me. “What look?”

“Promise me that you’ll cause no harm directly or indirectly to Ted by acting on my behalf. I’m dead serious, Raphael. Promise me.”

“What he’s doing to you-”

“Is exactly what I would do in his place. I knew the risks when I got into the Order. The Order has done absolutely nothing to renege on the terms of our bargain. All the fault lies with me. I deceived it, and if discovered, I’ll pay the price. I accept that.”

“What is the price?”

A spike of anxiety pinched me. My throat closed up for a moment. “They’ll throw me out on my ass.”

“Is that all?” he asked. “Are you sure they won’t send someone after you to make sure you don’t join the opposite side?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “Their conditioning is very good. It would take a lot to break my devotion to the Order even if they put me out on the street. Promise me.”

“Fine. I promise.”

We drove in silence for a few minutes.

Raphael’s eyes darkened. “Maybe we should be careful with public displays of affection.”

I gave him my thousand-yard stare. “Oh no. I think you misunderstand the nature of our relationship. You are mine. If there is an attractive female in speaking range, you will be publicly affectionate to me. Otherwise I’ll end up pistol-whipping them off you, and I’m pretty sure injuring innocent civilian hussies would be considered ‘conduct unbecoming a knight.’”

Raphael showed me the edge of his teeth in a slight smile. “And what will Ted think of you shacking up with a bouda?”

“Ted is welcome to show me a section in the Order’s regulations that forbids me to do so. My knowledge of regulations is extremely extensive. I can quote entire passages from memory. I guarantee that I know the rules much better than Ted.”

My brain took a second to process the words that had just left my mouth and realized how many things I had taken for granted. I said softly, “At least I hope you would be publicly affectionate.”

Raphael laughed softly, like a bemused wolf. “You ruined a spectacular alpha snarl.”

I had seen Raphael fight. He was devastatingly lethal. The way he tore up Cerberus’s head took both skill and the berserk frenzy that made boudas feared in any fight. Physically he could overpower me. I was barely five feet four; he was six feet and change. He outweighed me by about eighty pounds of hard muscle, toughened by constant exercise. He was without a doubt the best fighter of the bouda clan. But he was also a male, and bouda males preferred the beta role. I had snapped into an alpha mode without even realizing it.

“I didn’t mean…”

“I trust you to take the lead most of the time,” he said. “With the understanding that when I really insist, you will listen.”

I exhaled. “Agreed.”

The Casino, the People’s HQ in Atlanta, occupied the enormous lot that had once housed the Georgia Dome. The People’s architect had taken the Taj Mahal as a model and expanded the blueprint to twice its original size. Pure white in daylight, the Casino seemed to float above the asphalt, buoyed by the glittering streams of many fountains surrounding its walls. Its slender towers reached to a dizzying height, flanking the ornate central cupola. Elegant passageways united the towers, ethereal as if woven of spider’s web or carved from a chunk of ivory by a patient sculptor. Its elaborate central gates always stood open, just as the guardhouses and engines of war on its thick walls were always manned.

I parked in a side lot and nudged Raphael to put Kate’s book down.

A hundred yards from the gates, both of us paused in unison. The stench of undeath spread through the lot like a sickening miasma. No words could adequately describe it, but once you smelled it, you never forgot it. It was a sharp, leathery, dry stench, unmistakably of death but not of rot, the scent of sinew and bone wrapped in a foul, foul magic. I nearly gagged. Raphael slowed and I followed his example.

I’ve had the acclimatization training to accustom me to vampiric scent and presence, but it was one thing to watch a single vamp held tightly in check twenty yards away and completely another to be walking into the den of more than three hundred of them.

We made it through the doors past twin sentries dressed in black and armed with wickedly curved scimitars and stepped into the sea of slot machines. The air rang with a discordant cacophony of bells and chimes. Lights flashed. People screamed in manic glee, cursed, and laughed. More than half of the slots had been reworked to be completely independent of electricity. Even when the magic hit, the one-armed bandits would continue to quickly and mercilessly siphon cash out of the public’s pockets and into the coffers of the People. Necromantic research wasn’t cheap.

We halted before a service desk and I told a young man in a business suit who I was, flashed my Order ID, and explained I was here to see Ghastek. The young man, having introduced himself as Thomas, promptly affixed a smile on his face. “I’m sorry, ma’am, he’s incredibly busy.”

“Tell him I’m here on behalf of Kate Daniels.”

Thomas’s eyes went wide. He tapped the intercom, whispered into it, and nodded at us. “Unfortunately, he’s in the stables and can’t leave at the moment. He’s most eager to see you, and someone will be here to guide you to him very shortly.”

We walked over to the waiting area by the wall. A row of chairs waited for us, but I didn’t feel like sitting down. I felt like someone had painted a giant bull’s-eye on my chest and a dozen hidden snipers were ready to take a shot.

Raphael’s lips bent in an odd little smile. If you didn’t know him, you could mistake it for the dreamy absentminded grin of a man quietly enjoying his private thoughts. This little smile meant Raphael was a single infraction away from whipping out his knives and slicing everything around him to pieces. He wouldn’t do anything unless provoked, but once provoked, nobody could hold him back. The Pack and the People represented two sides of the same power coin: among all civilian factions in Atlanta, they were the most powerful. They had divided the city between them and stayed out of each other’s territory, knowing that if open conflict broke out between the two of them, the fight would be long, bloody, and costly, and the victor would be so weakened, he wouldn’t survive for long.

But as much as they avoided provoking each other, both found it prudent to show their opponent their teeth-and Raphael was all about proper etiquette.

A vampire dropped into the doorway. Female and probably black during life, now it had gained an odd purple tint. Hairless and emaciated, as if knitted together from twine and tough jerky, it stared at us with hungry eyes. Its mouth unhinged with mechanical precision, and the voice of a female navigator issued forth. “Good morning. My name is Jessica. Welcome to the Casino. Master Ghastek sends his deepest apologies. He’s engaged in something he cannot postpone, but he instructed me to take you to him. With my sincere regrets for your inconvenience, I must ask you to please leave your firearms at the desk.”

They wanted my guns. “Why?”

“The inner facilities house a lot of delicate and in some cases irreplaceable equipment. Occasionally our guests experience a heightened sense of anxiety and discomfort due to the presence of vampires, particularly when they visit the stables.”

“I wonder why,” Raphael said.

“We’ve had incidents of accidental discharge of firearms by our guests. We don’t request that you surrender your bladed weapons, only your firearms. I’m afraid this rule can’t be bent. My deepest apologies.”

“That will be fine,” I said, and deposited my P226s on the desk. Without my weapons, I felt naked.

“Thank you. Follow me, please.”

We followed the creature down an opulent hallway to a stairway and then down, and down, and down, beyond the daylight to the artificial illumination of electric lamps. The vampire crept lower and lower, moving on all fours, making so little noise, it was uncanny. We wove our way through a maze of dim tunnels, interrupted only by the occasional bulb of electric light and dark, foot-wide gaps in the ceiling.

“Is there going to be a minotaur in this labyrinth?” Raphael growled.

“The maze is a security measure, necessary for proper containment,” the navigator’s voice answered through the vamp’s mouth. “Unguided vampires are ruled by instinct. They don’t possess the cognitive capacity to navigate the tunnels. In the event of a massive breakout, the tunnels will act as a buffer zone. The ceiling contains a number of heavy-duty metal grilles that will drop down, separating the vampires into easily manageable groups and minimizing damage resulting from bloodlust-induced infighting.”

“How often do breakouts occur?” I asked. The stench of undeath had grown to a nearly unbearable level.

“Never. This way, please.” The vampire scuttled to a brightly lit doorway. “Watch your step.”

We entered a huge chamber and descended a dozen stairs to the floor. Harsh white light streamed from the high ceilings, illuminating every inch. A narrow hallway stretched to the center of the chamber, its walls formed by prison cells. Each six-by-six-foot cell housed a single vampire, chained by the neck to the wall. The chains were thicker than my thigh. The vampires’ eyes burned with insatiable bloodlust. They didn’t vocalize, didn’t make any noise; they just stared at us, straining on the chains as we passed by them. Every hair rose on the back of my neck. Deep inside, my secret self gathered into a tight clump, watching them back, ready to leap out at the slightest opportunity.

The hallway terminated in a round platform, from which more corridors radiated like spokes from a wheel. On the platform stood Ghastek. He was a man of average height and thin build. His light brown hair receded from his forehead, focusing attention on his eyes: dark and sharp enough to draw blood. His attire was black, from tailored slacks to the long-sleeved shirt, collar unbuttoned and sleeves very carefully and precisely rolled up, but where Raphael’s black was an aggressive, kick-ass darkness, Ghastek’s black was the laid-back, business-casual shade, an absence of color rather than a statement of attitude.

He glanced at us, nodded briskly, and turned his attention to three young people standing to the side next to a console. They wore identical black slacks, gray dress shirts, and dark violet vests. Journeymen, the Masters of the Dead in training. One of the three, a tall young male with red hair, stood very rigid. His hands curled into fists. He stared straight ahead, at the cell where a single vampire sat at the end of its chain.

Ghastek nodded. “Are you ready, Danton?”

“Yes, Master,” the redhead said through clenched teeth.

“Very well. Proceed.”

The vampire jerked as if shocked with live wire.

“Easy,” Ghastek said. “Remember: no fear.”

Slowly the bloodsucker took two steps back. The hunger in its ruby eyes dimmed slightly. The chain sagged and clanged to the floor.

“Good,” Ghastek said. “Maria, you may release the gate.”

A female journeywoman with long dark hair tapped the console. The gate of the cell crept up. The vampire stood still.

“Disengage the collar,” Ghastek ordered.

The vampire snapped the collar open.

“Bring him forward.”

The vampire took a tentative step forward. Another…

Its eyes flared with bloodlust like two glowing coals. Danton screamed. The bloodsucker charged us, eyes shining, jaws unhinging, huge claws scratching the platform.

No gun.

I dashed forward, pulling a field knife, but Raphael beat me to it. He swung, slashing in a precise arc, and checked himself in midmove.

The vamp froze. It simply stopped, petrified, one clawed foot on the ground and the rest in the air. Raphael had stopped his knife blade a mere half an inch from the undead throat.

“You have excellent reflexes,” Ghastek said. “A shapeshifter?”

Raphael simply nodded.

“I sincerely apologize,” Ghastek said. “I’m piloting him at the moment, so he won’t cause us any further concern.”

The vampire leapt backward, landing at Ghastek’s feet, and hugged the floor, his forehead pressed to stone. Ghastek’s face showed no strain. None at all.

Raphael stepped back, the knife vanishing into the sheath at his waist.

On the platform, Danton slumped into a heap, moaning softly, white clumps of foamy spit sliding out of his mouth. A medical team with a stretcher emerged from the side corridor and loaded him up, strapping him in.

Both remaining journeymen stared at Danton in horrified silence.

“You may go,” Ghastek said.

They fled.

“A shame, that,” Ghastek said softly.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“Fear. Done correctly, the contact with the undead mind, while repulsive to some, is completely harmless.”

The vampire uncoiled and rose straight up. It had been quite tall during life, but its body had shifted to a quadruped locomotion. Yet it stood straight as an arrow, probably in pain but staring right into Ghastek’s eyes. The Master of the Dead studied the twin points of furious red. “Fear of contact, however, can bring about horrible consequences, as you saw.”

The vampire dropped on all fours. “Perhaps we had best continue this discussion in my office.” Ghastek smiled drily. “Please.”

I walked next to him, Raphael on my right, the vampire on Ghastek’s left. “Navigating a vampire is similar to riding a large wave: you have to stay on top of it or it will crest and pull you under. Danton, unfortunately, permitted himself to drown. If he’s lucky, he should be able to regain enough cognitive ability to feed himself and tend to his own personal hygiene. If he’s unlucky, he’ll spend the rest of his life as a human vegetable. Would you care for an espresso?”

The vampire sprinted ahead.

“No, thank you. Watching a man foam at the mouth tends to short-circuit my thirst and appetite.” What happened to Danton deeply bothered me, but I knew the People’s contracts, and everything that had transpired was completely within the law. The journeymen signed their lives away when they chose to work for the People.

“Again, my apologies. I could have postponed the test, but Danton had avoided it twice already after daring to brag about how well he would do. I don’t tolerate displays of baseless egocentricity. The test had to proceed as scheduled. He’s a rare case. Most of our journeymen manage to fail without quite so much melodrama.”

We climbed the stairs and headed through the maze of the hallways until Ghastek opened the door to one of the rooms. Spacious, it resembled a living room rather than an office: a semicircle of sectional sofa upholstered in a warm red shade, a plain desk in the corner, books lining the shelves. To the left, through the door, I saw a small kitchenette and a vampire mixing a drink. To the right, floor-to-ceiling windows offered a view of the stables from above.

“Please sit down.”

I took a spot on the sofa. Raphael sat next to me, and Ghastek opposite. The vampire squirmed into the room and offered Ghastek an espresso. The Master of the Dead smiled quietly at his drink and sipped with obvious pleasure. The bloodsucker dropped to the floor and sat at his feet. It moved so naturally and Ghastek was so relaxed, I found it difficult to believe that the Master of the Dead controlled the vampire’s every twitch.

“I believe we’ve met before,” Ghastek said. “In Kate’s office. You pointed guns at my vampire.”

“You questioned my reflexes,” I said.

“I was quite impressed by them. That’s why I requested that you disarm.”

“You expected the journeyman to fail?”

“Precisely. This particular vampire is appraised at $34,500. It would be bad business sense to put it into a situation where it would endure a dozen bullets shot through its skull.”

What a cold, cold man.

Ghastek sipped his espresso. “I assume you’re here to call in the favor I owe to Kate.”

“Yes.”

“How is she, by the way?”

Something in the perfectly neutral way he asked the question set my teeth on edge.

“She’s recuperating,” Raphael said. “And as a Friend of the Pack, she’s enjoying the Pack’s protection.” He had been staying quiet so far and I knew why. Anything he said would be used by the People against the Pack. He minimized the amount of conversation, but he made the message crystal clear.

Ghastek chuckled. “I assure you, she’s quite capable of protecting herself. She tends to kick people in the face when she finds them offensive. Is it true she broke a red sword during the Midnight Games by impaling herself on it?”

An alarm blared in my head. “I don’t remember it quite that way,” I lied. “As I recall, a member of the opposing team meant to strike with the sword. Kate interrupted his strike, and when he tried to free the blade, he cut himself on it. The blood from his hand shattered the sword.”

“I see.” Ghastek drank the last of his espresso and handed the cup to the vampire. “So what may I do for you?”

“I would like you to answer a series of questions.” I had to phrase the questions very carefully. “This interview is conducted in confidence. I ask you to not discuss it with anyone unless required to do so by law.”

“I’ll happily do so, provided your questions are within the range defined by the conditions in the original agreement.”

The agreement specified that he wouldn’t do anything to directly harm himself, his team, or the People as a group.

“Are you familiar with the area known as Scratches, located west of Red Market?”

“Yes.”

“Is it true that the People routinely patrol a large area of the city surrounding the Casino?”

“Yes.”

“Do any patrol routes pass through Scratches?”

“No.

So the vampire wasn’t the People’s observer. “To your knowledge, are the People currently conducting any operations in the Scratches?”

“No.”

“Are you familiar with Greek paganism?”

I watched him carefully, but he showed no signs of being surprised by the question. “I have a moderate knowledge of it, within the limits common to most educated individuals. I’m not, by any means, an expert.”

“Keeping in mind the previous question, how would you define the term ‘shade’?”

“An incorporeal entity representing the essence of a recently departed, a disembodied ‘soul,’ if you will. It’s a purely philosophical concept.”

“If confronted with a shade, how would you explain its existence?”

Ghastek leaned back, braiding his long fingers. “There are no such things as ghosts. All ‘spirits,’ ‘lost souls,’ and so forth are superstition. To exist in our reality, one requires a solid form. So, if confronted with a shade, I would surmise that it’s either a hoax or a postmortem projection. For some magically capable individuals death comes slowly, in that even after their bodies cease their function and become clinically dead, their magic keeps their minds functioning for an extended period of time. In effect, they are mostly dead. In this state, some persons may project an image of themselves, especially if they are aided by the magic of a trained necromancer or a medium.

“Folklore is full of examples of such phenomena. For example, there’s a tale in Arabian Nights that features a sage whose head was struck off his body after death and set upon a platter. It recognized people familiar to the sage and was able to speak. But I digress.” He invited the next question with a nod.

“Are you aware of any necromancers unaffiliated with the People and capable of vampiric navigation who are currently active in the city?”

Ghastek’s face registered distaste, as if he had smelled something unpleasant. He plainly didn’t want to answer the question. “Yes.”

“Please identify the individuals described.”

“Lynn Morriss.”

Oh wow. Spider Lynn was one the seven premier Masters of the Dead in Atlanta. All of the People’s Masters of the Dead branded their vampires. Lynn ’s brand was a small stylized spider. “When did she leave the People?”

“She withdrew her membership three days ago.”

According to Raphael, that was Alex Doulos’s date of death. It could be a coincidence, but I highly doubted it.

“She also purchased several vampires out of her stable,” Ghastek volunteered.

“How many can she pilot at once?” Raphael asked.

“Three,” Ghastek said. “Up to four on a good day. Her control becomes shaky after that.”

“Why did she leave?” I asked.

“She became disillusioned. We all seek to attain our goals. Some are willing to wait and others, like Lynn, lose their patience.”

“How would you describe her?”

Ghastek sighed. “Precise, ruthless, single-minded. She was neither liked nor disliked. She did her job well and required little attention.”

“What caused her to leave the People, in your opinion?”

“I don’t know. But it was deeply profound. One doesn’t walk away from fifteen years of hard work without a reason.”

I rose. “Thank you very much for your time.”

Ghastek nodded. “Thank you. When I made the agreement with Kate, I never imagined the restitution would be so easy. Let me see you out.” The vampire moved by the door. “A word of caution: if Lynn Morriss has decided to make her new home in the Scratches, I would advise you to stay away from it. Lynn is a formidable opponent.”

“Do the People plan to take any action against her?”

“No,” Ghastek said with a small smile. “There is no need.”

***

Outside I hopped into our vehicle, the taint of vampiric magic clinging to me like greasy smoke. “I feel soiled.”

“Like walking into a room after a day of work, falling into bed, and realizing the sheets are covered in cold K-Y jelly,” Raphael said.

I just stared at him.

“With a funky smell,” he added.

My Order conditioning failed me. “Ew.”

Raphael grinned.

“I’m not even going to ask if that’s happened to you.” I started the vehicle. “Has that happened to you?”

“Yes.”

Ew. “Where?”

“In the bouda house.”

Ew!

“I was really tired and you’ve seen that place: everything smells like sex…”

“I don’t want to know.” I peeled out of the parking lot.

“So where are we going?”

“To Spider Lynn’s house. We’re going to dig through her trash, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll do some breaking and entering.”

Raphael frowned. “Do you know where she lives?”

“Yes. I memorized the addresses of all the Masters of the Dead in the city. I have a lot of time on my hands.”

He squinted at me, looking remarkably like a gentleman pirate from my favorite romance novels. “What else do you store in your head?”

“This and that. I remember the first thing you ever said to me. You know, when you carried me from the cart into the tub so your mother could fix me.”

“I imagine it was something very romantic,” he said. “Something along the lines of ‘I’ve got you’ or ‘I won’t let you die.’”

“I was bleeding in the bathtub, trying to realign my bones, and my hyena glands voided from the pain. You said, ‘Don’t worry, we have an excellent filtration system.’”

The look on his face was priceless.

“That can’t be the first thing.”

“It was.”

We drove in silence. “About the K-Y,” Raphael said.

“I don’t want to know!’

“Once I washed it out of my hair-”

“Raphael, why are you doing this?”

“I want to make you go ‘Ew’ again.”

“Why in the world would you want to do that?”

“It’s an irrepressible male impulse. It just has to be done. As I was saying, once I washed it out-”

“Raphael!”

“No, wait, you’ll like the next part.”

By the time we reached Spider Lynn’s house, my endurance had been tested to its limits.

Her place was a small ranch-style house, set way back from the road and hidden by a six-foot-tall wooden fence. I opened the trash can. A cloud of rancid stink hit me. Filthy but empty.

Raphael examined the fence, took a running start, and sailed over it, flipping in the air like a vault gymnast. I did it the old-fashioned way: I ran, jumped, gripping the edge, and pulled myself up and over. Raphael pulled out a couple of lock picks and inserted them into the lock. The door clicked and we entered a dark, empty garage. I blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the gloom, and then my night vision kicked in. Some people’s garages resembled a yard sale postbombing. Spider Lynn ’s was orderly and precise, a collection of tools and cleaning utensils carefully hung on hooks. The floor was freshly swept. If I had a garage, mine would look just like it.

The door leading from the garage to the house was predictably locked and took ten seconds to be sprung by Raphael. Inside was an upscale suburban kitchen with stainless steel appliances and brand-new furniture. Perfectly clean sink. No odor of rot from the garbage disposal.

The scent signatures were old. She hadn’t been in the house for two days, at least.

“Interesting,” Raphael said.

I came to stand by him.

A large dent marred the living room wall just below a painting of some geometric shapes. A stain spread about it. Below, shards of broken glass glinted, weakly catching the daylight from the windows, among shriveled green stems. Someone had thrown a vase against the wall.

“How tall is she?” Raphael asked.

“Two inches taller than me.”

“It might have been her then. I’d hit a lot higher.”

We look at the stain. “She was angry,” I said.

“Very.”

“Not a lover.”

Raphael nodded. “White flowers.”

I inhaled, sorting the pollen aroma: barely noticeable scent of white lilies, light perfume of carnations, sweet fragrance of snapdragons, dryness of baby’s breath…

“Sympathy arrangement,” we both said at the same time.

I crouched by the pile of stems and dug through it. My fingers slid against a damp rectangle. I pulled it free: a small card with a logo, a snake coiling around a wineglass. The letters under it said, “ Bright Light Hospital, Thaumaturgy College of Atlanta.”

I opened the card and read it out loud. “I am so sorry. Ben Rodney, MD, CMM.” Doctor of Medicine and Certified Medical Mage.

Raphael bent down and tapped the card. “Alex was a patient there. I know what this is: when there is nothing more they can do, they send you the ‘set your affairs in order’ flowers.”

“She was dying.”

“Looks that way.”

“At least we’ve established the connection between her and Alex.” I looked at the card.

We searched the rest of the house. In the office we found a filing cabinet full of medical records. Spider Lynn was diagnosed with Niemann-Pick disease, type C. A progressive, incurable disease, it affected her spleen and liver and damaged her brain. Simple things like walking and swallowing had become increasingly difficult. She had trouble looking up and down. Her vision and hearing were fading. Soon she would be a prisoner in her own body, and then she would die.

“Come see this,” Raphael called.

I followed him to the library. Open books covered the floor. Raphael picked up one. “And so Hades seized Persephone and bore her away in his chariot to the depths of the bleak realm of the dead. In vain her mother, the generous Demeter, searched for her daughter. Alone the Goddess of Harvest wandered the world, clothed in rags, like a common woman, and in her sorrow she had forgotten to tend to the soil and cultivate plants. Denied her precious gifts, the flowers withered on their stalks, the trees shed their leaves in mourning, and everything that had been green and alive shriveled and died. Winter had come upon the world and the people wailed in hunger. Even the golden apples in Hera’s orchard had fallen off the bare branches of the sacred tree.”

“Cheery.” I checked a couple of other books. “Same thing.”

“This one is in Greek.” Raphael held up a huge, dusty tome and pointed to the page. On it was a picture of an apple.

“So she is obsessed with Hades and apples. What do we know about these apples?” I looked through the book.

“Here’s one,” Raphael said. “‘Eris, the Goddess of Discord, alone was not invited to attend the wedding. Quietly she sulked until, consumed by her need for revenge, she picked a golden apple, wrote “Kallistri,” meaning “To the Fairest,” upon its golden skin, and tossed it in the midst of the celebrating Olym pians. And thus began the Trojan War…’”

“Well, that was slick, but it doesn’t help us any.” I searched through my book. “Here is the eleventh labor of Hercules. He needs to get the golden apples of immortality from Hera’s orchard.” I stopped and looked at Raphael.

“Immortality apples,” he said. “How about that.”

I tapped the book. “What do we know so far? Spider Lynn is terminally ill. She’s obsessed with apples of immortality, probably because she thinks they can cure her. She’s holding the shade of Alex Doulos hostage for unknown purposes. Alex was the priest of Hades.”

“Hades stole Persephone, who was the daughter of Demeter, Goddess of Harvest, who controlled the seasons, which affected Hera’s apples of immortality. It’s like playing six degrees of separation.” Raphael flipped through his book. “It says here that apples are the food of the gods. They and ambrosia keep the gods young and immortal. What do you suppose happens if that bitch eats them?”

“Nothing good.” We had both dealt with two wannabe gods during the flare. I still had nightmares. I could tell by Raphael’s face that he didn’t care to repeat the experience either.

“We’re going to have to break into that house.”

“Yes.” Raphael’s face was grim.

A house guarded by a giant hellhound, surrounded by an electric fence and a strong ward, and hiding at least three vampires, piloted by a woman overcome by anger and terrified of death.

It’s good that I had Boom Baby.

We stood leaning against the Jeep, on the very edge of Cerberus’s territory, waiting for the magic to drain from the world. Raphael leaned next to me, still engrossed in the book of Greek myths. He read, playing with a small knife, flipping it absent mindedly with his left hand, his fingers catching whichever end happened to point down. Tip, handle, tip, handle. The sun set, bleeding orange blood onto the pale sky. I sampled the evening breeze and petted my giant gun.

Being a professional meant you nurtured your fear. You struggled with your terror until you tamed it and made it serve you. It made you sharper and helped you stay alive. But no matter how tame your fear became, it still gnawed on your soul. I didn’t want to go into the house full of vampires. I didn’t want Raphael to be hurt.

I had fought so hard not to fall for him, but I had anyway, and now, having been with him, having woken up next to him, I knew we had something. It was a very small, fragile something, and I would rip through a hundred vampires to keep it safe.

“You’re my Artemis,” Raphael said.

I blinked.

“Fierce, prickly, beautiful huntress, forever pure and uncompromising.”

Prickly? More like bitchy. “I’m not that pure.”

He leaned over. His hand brushed the back of my neck and I felt the light press of teeth on skin. Every nerve in my body tingled. My nipples went tight, and a slow, hungry heat blossomed below my stomach.

Raphael’s voice was a smooth whispery seduction in my ear. “There is nobody to see us for miles and miles, but you’re blushing. How is that not pure?”

His smile was pure sin. I shifted closer to him and leaned against his chest, resting my head on his shoulder. He stiffened, surprised, and I snuggled closer, soaking up the warmth of his body with my back. He raised his arm and put it around my shoulders. I concentrated and heard the steady beating of his heart, strong and a little too fast. He was anxious, too.

“If we get out of this mess alive and undamaged, would you like to spend the night in my apartment or do you want me to stay with you?”

“Either way will work,” he said softly.

The six-month storming of my castle had put a definite dent in Raphael’s body armor. It would take me a long time to convince him that he didn’t have to be charming, witty, and sexy around me twenty-four-seven. Some part of me had hoped that once we had sex, everything would smooth itself out. But in the end, he was still insecure and I was still broken. Sex was simple. Being together was a lot more complicated.

We stood together and watched the sunset.

The magic crashed.

“Time to pry Doulos’s shade from that bitch,” Raphael said.

“You realize that if we’re right and Cerberus is after his corpse, he will follow Doulos wherever we take him?”

“Yes. But my mother deserves to say her good-byes.”

He took off his clothes, stood still for a moment, the breeze fanning his perfect form, and opened his mouth. A groan broke free, deepening into a hair-raising growl, as his body stretched and thickened, hard muscle encasing it. Fur sheathed him. He glanced at me and his eyes were completely wild.

I lifted Boom Baby. Raphael picked up a six-foot metal pole he’d wrenched from the slope on the way here. We headed down through the ravines to the house.

“Those bullets are the size of a dollar bill,” Raphael said.

“They are Silver Hawks: armor-piercing, incendiary, explosive, silver-load cartridges. They slice through armor, set things on fire, and explode inside the target, delivering a load of extremely potent silver pellets. Boom Baby fires two hundred of these per minute.”

An excited snarl rolled ahead of us. The ground trembled in sync with the beat of the giant paws.

“Can they handle the dog?” he asked.

“We’re about to find out.” I raised Boom Baby. “Here, Fido… Here, boy…”

Ahead, Cerberus rounded the curve and charged us.

I squeezed the trigger. A high-pitched whine of bullet flurry ripped through the air. Boom Baby bucked in my hands, the recoil hitting me hard. The bullets bit into Cerberus’s chest, punching through the muscle to the heart. Blood flew. The great hellhound ran three more steps, not realizing the lethal swarm had already shredded his life, stumbled, and fell, paws over head. He rolled and slid to a stop five feet from me in a smoking ruin.

“Nice gun,” Raphael said.

Five minutes later we reached the electric fence. Raphael braided the fingers of his hands together and offered them to me like a stepping stool. I stepped, pushing hard, and he threw me, adding his strength to my jump. I shot over the fence, flipped in the air, and landed in the dirt. Boom Baby came flying next. I caught it and gently lowered it to the ground. In the cramped quarters inside the house, it would restrict my movements too much. I pulled out my P226s, the familiar weight of the twin firearms reassuring in my hands. Raphael took a running start, pole in hand, and vaulted over the fence, landing gracefully next to me. There were times when Lyc-V came in handy.

We jogged to the house and I pressed against the side. Raphael hammered a single kick to the door and it flew off its hinges, crashing into the darkness. I cleared the doorway and stepped into the gloom. The door led to a narrow foyer. On the right, stairs led to the second floor. Straight ahead lay a hallway and past it, through a doorway, a sitting room waited steeped in the twilight, the dark bulky shapes of furniture like the spines of sleeping beasts.

The nauseating stench of undead flesh laced my nostrils. It clung to the floor, permeating the carpets. If smell had color, this reek would drip from the draft in oily, fat drops of black. It was impossible to tell where it came from.

A moment later I caught another scent entirely: the bitter, clinical scent of embalming fluid. A human body waited for us somewhere in the house.

My eyes adjusted to the low light. We padded through the foyer on silent feet, cleared the doorway, and emerged into the hallway.

Slow and steady, room by room. An undead waited at the end of this race, and I had a feeling it would find us before we found it.

Two small, musty rooms later, we stepped into the family room. The old furniture had been haphazardly piled at the walls. In the center of the room, on the filthy old rug, lay the corpse of Alex Doulos. A huge chain caught the body’s ankle, binding it to a rod driven into the floor.

Two red-hot eyes sparked in the heap of furniture at the opposite wall.

I fired. The first two bullets punched the bloodsucker’s head.

The vampire leapt.

My guns spat thunder and bullets in a lethal rhythm, trailing the bloodsucker as it hurtled through the air.

Raphael lunged from the left, and I raised the guns’ barrels up a fraction of a second before he fell onto the vamp from behind. The bloodsucker went limp in his hands. My bullets had chewed its skull to mush. Raphael grasped the vamp’s chin, exposing the neck; his knife flashed, and the head went flying across the room.

I reloaded. The bloodsucker had been unpiloted. Its eyes had been too crazed and it attacked me straight on, without any consideration for the fact that there were two of us. Spider Lynn was gone. She had left the vampire to us as a present.

It took us ten minutes to search the rest of the house. Empty as expected. I didn’t think she would sacrifice another vampire. We did find the generator and I shut it off, cutting the power to the fence.

We returned to the body. Alex lay on his side, thrown on the floor like a dirty rag. Death had robbed him of warmth, but his features still kept hints of his personality: a network of laugh lines around the eyes; strong chin; wide, tall forehead. His hair was pure white and worn long enough to reach his shoulders. A small green object lay by him. I picked it up. A little toy car. How odd. I tucked the car into my pocket.

We had to take him out of this terrible place. Raphael touched the chain securing Alex’s ankle and jerked his hand away. A silver-steel alloy.

The chain clasped Alex’s ankle too tightly. Neither one of us could get it off without burning all the meat off our fingers. I ripped fabric off the nearest couch, wrapped it around the rod the body was chained to, and strained. It didn’t even shiver.

“Let me.”

Raphael grasped the rod. Veins on his face bulged and he ripped it free. He slung the body over his shoulder and let the chain trail behind him. It would have to do.

It took us three hours to cross the city. We drove through the dilapidated remnants of the industrial district and left Atlanta behind. Woods replaced ruins. The road grew bumpy. Neither of us said anything. The corpse wrapped in a blanket and resting in the backseat kept me from talking, and Raphael seemed immersed in thought.

Cold wind fanned us. The night was vast and filled with a flurry of scents. A sprinkling of stars shone high above, indifferent to us and our little problems.

Thirty minutes later we pulled onto the side road, dipping into the dense forest. The dirt road veered, we turned, and a large ranch-style house came into view. The bouda house. Usually it was full of life: sentries prowled the woods, and insane laughter floated on the wind currents, mixing with moaning and snarls of sexual release. But now it lay quiet. Raphael had said that everyone had left, letting Aunt B grieve in private, but it didn’t hit home until I actually saw it.

A woman waited for us on the porch, her hands crossed under her breasts. Middle-aged and plump, she wore her hair atop her head in a bun. Careworn shadows distorted her usually happy face. She looked like a very young grandmother who had just realized her grandson’s school bus was ten minutes late.

We parked. Raphael hopped out and gently picked up Alex’s body. Alex’s white hair spilled over Raphael’s shaggy arm. Aunt B looked on without a word as the monster who was her son and my mate carried her lover’s body to her and held it out. A single word escaped his monstrous mouth. “Mother…”

Aunt B’s lips trembled. She slumped against the porch post. Her shoulders shook and she covered her mouth with her hand. Tears swelled in her eyes. No sobs escaped her lips. She simply stood there and cried, grief plain and raw on her face.

What do I do? She was the bouda alpha. Alphas didn’t… they didn’t show weakness. They didn’t cry.

She was just a woman.

I walked up on the porch and hugged her. “Let’s take him inside.”

For a moment I thought she would snap my neck, and then she nodded wordlessly and I opened the door. We took him in and laid him to rest on a table in the back room. She sank into a chair next to him. Raphael sat on the floor next to her and she stroked his head.

I went into the kitchen, brewed herbal tea, and took it to her. Raphael was gone and Aunt B sat alone. Her face was wet with tears. Her eyes glanced at me. Still sharp and hard. She took the cup. “Thank you.”

I nodded, not knowing what to do with myself.

“Are you and my son together?”

Everything inside me clenched, reminding me I was beastkin and she was the boudas’ alpha. “Yes.”

“That’s good,” she said softly. “I always liked you.” She glanced at Alex. “Make the best of it. The way we did.”

The magic surged, drowning us. The outline of Alex’s body shimmered. A pale glow broke free of the corpse and congealed into Alex Doulos. He saw Aunt B. His voice was like the whisper of dry leaves underfoot. “Beatrice?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

I tiptoed out of the room.

I found Raphael outside, on the porch. Too bulky to fit into a chair in his warrior form, he sat on the floor. Hard knotted muscle corded his back. His long arms lay folded on his knees and the claws of his right hand protruded, crisp in moonlight.

He truly looked monstrous. Just like the secret me.

I sat next to him.

“If I die, will you grieve for me?” he asked.

“Yes. But before I do that, I’ll fight to save you.”

“Why?”

I put my hand onto his furry forearm. “Because I feel good when you’re near me. It’s not just sex, and it isn’t loneliness, it’s more than that. It’s kind of frightening. I think that’s why I fought it for so long.”

The lawn before us seemed to go on forever, each grass blade slick with reflected moonlight. Soon Cerberus would come running, his paws mashing big ugly holes in the perfect grass.

“Do you think we’ll ever have what they had?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I think what they had grew over many years. We still have a lot of things to work out. But I’d like to try, Raphael. When I said you’re mine, I meant it. I don’t do things halfway. For better or worse.”

We heard light footsteps. The door opened. “He wants you,” Aunt B said.

Alex Doulos had a soft, kind voice. “My time’s short,” he said. “Do you know the myth of Hades and Persephone?”

“Yes,” Raphael answered.

“Good. That will make things simple then. I’m a priest of Hades. My family has served him for generations. One of our duties is to tend to secret shrines of Hades. They’re scattered all over the world and kept hidden. During the flares, one of the shrines randomly grows an apple tree, which bears fruit.”

“Hera’s Apples,” I said.

Alex motioned with his arm. “The Vikings call them Idun’s Apples, the Russians call them Apples of Youth, and we call them Persephone’s Apples. The name doesn’t matter. The apples are supposed to grant youth and long life span to gods. When eaten by normal humans, who don’t have Persephone’s gift or immunity to it, the apples produce horrible consequences. That’s why we guard the tree until the apples ripen and sacrifice the fruit to Hades. No part of the apples must remain in our world. It is my duty to make sure the apples are destroyed. It’s the purpose of my service. But I’ve failed.

“My body was kidnapped by a woman who calls herself Spider Lynn. She’s dying and she wants the apples for herself. She mustn’t eat them. It’s very, very important. She must not eat them.”

“Where is Lynn now?” I asked.

“I imagine she’s at the shrine. It’s in the woods behind my summer house. Raphael, you remember, we had a cookout at that house last year.”

I glanced at Raphael. “It’s across the wood, bordering our territory. Not too far,” he said. “How did she know the location of the shrine?”

Alex’s shade shuddered. “I told her. She realized that she couldn’t compel me to reveal it and she kidnapped my nephew. His parents are away and I was watching the boy. I couldn’t let the vampires hurt the child.”

I pulled the green toy car from my pocket. “The boy…”

“Yes,” Alex confirmed. “It’s his. Raphael, I know that you’re not my son and you owe me nothing. But I beg you, please, don’t let her get the apples. Save the boy. And whatever you do, don’t eat them.”

“I’ll do it,” Raphael said simply.

“The shrine’s guarded by a serpent, but it won’t last against Spider Lynn’s vampires for long. Take the bracelet off my arm. It’s keyed to the ward that’s guarding the shrine. Lynn has enough magic to force herself past the defensive spell, but it will leave her weakened. She’ll need time to recover. You won’t.”

A deafening roar shook the house. Cerberus had found us.

“He’s come for me.” Alex smiled. “It’s time to go. Take the bracelet. It will unlock the ward and let you pick up the apples.”

Raphael slipped the simple metal loop off the corpse’s right wrist and placed it over his own. The bracelet barely enclosed two thirds of his wrist. “Are you really going to Hades?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “But the last of my power is fading. My body is dead, Raphael. I can no longer hold on to it. Earth is the home of the living, not the dead. Don’t mourn me. My life was full and well lived. I was fortunate. Some might even say blessed. I only wish that I had lived a few days longer so I could destroy the apples myself instead of forcing this burden on you. That and your mother’s tears are my only regrets.”

Aunt B rose, picked up the corpse, and strode outside. We followed her. She walked onto the lawn. They said something to each other, too quiet to hear, and then she lowered him into the grass and stepped away.

The trees rustled. A giant shape muscled through the trunks and trotted into the open, its three heads close to the ground. The center head sniffed Alex’s body and picked it up, clamping it in its great fangs.

“Take care of your mother, Raphael,” a ghostly voice called out.

The body burst into flames. The great dog howled and vanished.

Raphael’s eyes shone once, catching the moonlight. “Are you with me?”

“Who else will protect your furry butt?”

“I’m coming, too,” Aunt B said.

Raphael shook his head. “We’ve got this.”

Her eyes flashed with red, a precursor to an alpha stare.

“He didn’t want you involved,” Raphael said. “He asked me, not you. The clan needs you.”

“We’ve got it.” I nodded.

We turned our backs on her and headed to the Jeep. “Did we just defy your mother, who’s also your alpha?” I murmured.

“Yes, we did.”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Aunt B standing there with a bewildered look on her face. “Let’s go faster before she realizes that.”

The magic was up and Boom Baby was useless. I took a crossbow and bolts from the Jeep and followed Raphael into the woods. He broke into a run, inhumanly fast in warrior form, and I struggled to keep up.

Half a mile later Raphael stopped. “The magic is up,” he said softly.

“I know.”

“You’re slower in this form.”

I had run as fast as I could. When we were both in human form, I was faster. But in warrior form, he beat me.

“You can’t keep up.”

I realized what he was saying. “No.”

“Andrea…”

“No!”

“We’re short on time,” he said. “There’s a little boy out there with at least two vampires. We don’t even know if he’s alive.”

My heart hammered in my chest. “You don’t understand. I lose control when I’m her.”

“Andrea, please,” he said. “We’re losing time.”

I closed my eyes. He was right. We had to save the boy. We had to get the apples away from Lynn. I had to…

I stripped off my clothes and reached to the beast living inside me. She smiled and leapt out, flowing over my arms, my legs, my back, giving me her strength. My bones stretched, my muscles swelled, and there I stood, revealed and naked.

The shapeshifters got a choice: human, warrior form, or animal. I had only two: the human me and the secret me.

Raphael’s eyes shone with red. He ran.

I swiped up my crossbow and then dropped it. My claws were too long. I wouldn’t be able to work it. I’d have to fight with my claws and teeth. I grabbed the little toy car and hid it in my fist.

Raphael was a mere shadow in the distance. I burst into a run. It felt like flying, light and easy. My muscles welcomed the exertion and I sprinted, catching him with ease. Together we dashed through the woods, two humanoid nightmares, fast and slick, our voices faint whispers on the draft.

“I can’t see you.”

“I don’t want you to see me.” I purposely picked my way so he caught only the mere flashes of me.

“Don’t hide from me,” he asked.

I ignored him.

Suddenly he burst through the brush. I had no chance to hide. He saw all of me: my limbs, my face that was neither animal nor beast, my breasts…

“You’re lovely,” he whispered as he passed me in a burst of speed.

“You’re sick,” I told him.

“You’ve a perfect union of human and animal: proportionate and elegant and strong. Your form is what we aspire to. How’s that sick?”

“I’m a human!”

“So am I. You don’t have to hide from me, Andrea. I think you are beautiful.”

Nobody, not human, not shapeshifter, not even my mother had ever told me that the beast form was beautiful. Inside me, the human me put her hands on her face and cried.

Miles flashed by. We passed a house in a blur of speed. Trees parted, underbrush snapped, and we burst into a clearing. A ward ignited with gold, barring our way in a translucent wall.

Inside the ward, a dark-haired boy crouched on the ground, hugging his knees. Past him a dead vampire lay broken on the grass, its skull shattered. To the left, an unnaturally large snake was dying on the grass, a second vampire caught in its coils. The vamp’s neck was broken, its vertebrae crushed. Blood drenched the snake’s coils. With each new squeeze, more blood washed the scales.

Past them, a ring of colonnades carved of pure white stone guarded a narrow apple sapling. Four yellow apples hung from the branches. The fifth apple, with a small piece bitten off, lay on the grass, by the hand of a dark-haired woman. She slumped on the grass. Her horribly distended stomach had ripped through her tailored slacks.

Oh no. She ate it. We were too late.

“Now look what you did.” A man walked up to us, his eyes fixed on Spider Lynn. “I done told you to leave the apples alone.”

Raphael snarled. The fur on his back rose.

The man was tall and broad-shouldered, built with strength in mind. Dark stubble peppered his face. He wore a white T-shirt, a pair of old jeans, and yellow work boots. A flannel shirt hung from his blocky shoulders. He looked like a good old boy in search of a porch with a rocking chair and a glass of iced tea. He turned to us and said, “Hi.”

This was surreal. “Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m Teddy Jo.”

“You’re the man who called me about Raphael running from Cerberus?”

“I called Kate,” he said. “You answered the phone. Do you have the bracelet?”

“What?”

“Doulos’s bracelet. You have it?” He saw the bracelet on Raphael’s arm. “Oh good then. We’re in business.”

Lynn squirmed on the grass and began to cry. “What is happening to me?”

Teddy Jo glanced at her. “You’ve brought this on yourself.”

Raphael lunged at him. His clawed fingers closed about Teddy Jo’s throat, the bracelet glinting with steel on his forearm. “What are you doing here?”

“Well now, you might want to rethink that,” Teddy Jo said, raising his arm. His sleeve fell back, revealing an identical bracelet, but made of gold. “Given as we’re on the same side.”

Magic slammed my senses. Teddy Jo’s eyes turned solid black. The flannel shirt ripped on his back and two colossal black wings thrust into the night. Fire ran from his bracelet down into his hand and snapped into a flaming blade.

“Thanatos,” Lynn squeaked.

The angel of death clamped Raphael’s wrist and squeezed. Raphael bared his teeth and crushed Thanatos’s throat.

Lynn ’s stomach twisted. She howled as if cut. Alex’s nephew jerked.

“Stop!” I barked at the two men. “There’s a kid in shock sitting behind that ward, locked with whatever is about to crawl out of Lynn ’s gut! Raphael, break the damn ward. Teddy Jo, I swear, you don’t let go of him this instant, I’ll rip your wings off!”

The two of them stared at me.

“Do it!”

Teddy Jo let go. Raphael thrust his arm into the ward and the wall of gold drained down, revealing the shrine.

I leapt inside and swept the boy up into my arms. “Listen to me.”

He stared at me with empty eyes. To him I was a monster.

I opened my hand and showed him the car. He touched it gently and I handed it to him. “I won’t hurt you. Uncle Alex’s house, do you know where it is?”

He nodded.

“I want you to run to it and not look back. Okay?”

He clutched the car in his fist. I set him down and he ran.

Raphael snarled at Teddy Jo. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Teddy Jo shrugged his massive wings. “I’m here to set things right. I serve Hades just like Doulos, except that he was a priest and I’m something other.”

“Where were you until now?”

“Look, fella, I follow the rules. I would have liked to come down earlier and start chopping people’s heads off, but I have to sit on my hands and wait until someone bites the damn apple. I’m the emergency brake here. That’s what makes me the good guy.”

Lynn screamed.

“And there she goes,” Teddy Jo said.

Lynn ’s stomach tore. A slithering green mass spilled forth, and as it boiled out, Lynn was sucked in, almost as if her body had turned inside out. The mass grew larger and larger, bigger than a house, bigger than Cerberus. Scales formed on its surface. Magic roiled inside it, whipping my senses into overdrive.

The mass flexed and uncoiled. An enormous reptilian body thrust across the clearing. Three dragon heads snapped at the air with wicked teeth, jerking on long necks.

The dragon tasted the night and roared.

Teddy Jo shot straight up and hovered, his sword a beacon of light. “I’ll take the center head. You two do as you please.”

Lynn the dragon whipped about and I saw her eyes: cold and green, devoid of any humanity or feeling. Something inside me snapped. Fury drowned the world, flushing the rational thought. I was very angry. She had stolen the body of a man, denying his mate her mourning. She had tortured that man. She had kidnapped and terrorized a child. She deserved to die.

Teddy Jo swept at the dragon. The flaming sword carved through her neck like it was butter. The head tumbled down in a whiff of scorched meat. Then the stump quivered and split in half, and two new heads sprouted in its place and lunged for Teddy Jo.

“A hydra! Gods damn it!” Teddy Jo veered out of the way.

I smelled her flesh, waiting for me just beneath her scales. My fingers flexed. My tongue licked my fangs. Rage warmed me from the inside, hot and sharp and so very welcome. Andrea, the knight of the Order, would have to sleep through tonight. Tonight I was beastkin, the daughter of a hyena.

The dragon’s flesh beckoned, elastic and smooth, coiling before me, begging for a taste.

The world went red. I charged.

Blood. Rip, claw, rip, rip, more, dig, dig into flesh.

A huge, pulsating sac swelled before me. I sliced into it, laughed when blood drenched me, and kept ripping. All around me, wet, hot redness shuddered.

“Enough!” A force clamped me and tossed me aside. I flew through the air, landed on all fours, and charged my assailant. He tripped me and I fell. The air burst from my lungs in a rush. My head swam.

The reality came back with ponderous slowness. I lay on my back in the grass, my body slick with reptilian blood. Slowly the rage faded and I saw Raphael.

“Are you hurt?” I asked him.

“Nothing dire.”

The dragon’s corpse lay on its side, a dozen half-formed heads sprawling like the stalks of some disgusting flower. A big hole gaped in her gut. It looked like someone had tunneled through her. Teddy Jo stood bent over near her, breathing hard.

“Did I do that?”

Raphael nodded. “You ripped apart her heart. That’s what finally killed her.”

“The apples.” I tried to get up, but my legs refused to obey.

Raphael scooped me up. “Are you okay?”

“Overdid it.” Drowsiness swept over me. My muscles turned to cotton. I stuck my ugly head against his neck. I felt dirty and awful. My stomach clenched.

If he hadn’t pulled me out, I would’ve cut and sliced until I passed out.

Slowly it sank in: we won.

“I’ll take care of the apples,” Teddy Jo said. “You take your lady home.”

Raphael looked at him. “Good fight,” he said.

“Yeah,” Teddy Jo answered. “We didn’t do too bad. I live down in the Warren. Look me up if you wanna have a beer some time.”

Raphael carried me off.

“Don’t forget the boy,” I whispered.

“I won’t. We’re going to get the boy and drop him off with my mother. Then I’ll take you to my house. I have a garden tub. We’ll get nice and clean and then crawl into our bed and sleep until noon. Would you like that?”

“Very much,” I said and licked his neck. “Raphael…”

“Yes?”

“I killed them. The boudas who tortured me and my mother. I went back after Academy, and I challenged them and killed them all one by one.”

He licked my cheek. “Come home with me,” he said simply.

I held on to him and whispered, “You couldn’t keep me away.”

No matter what job a man has, he always ends up hating parts of it. Now, I loved my job, the sword, the wings, the chopping off the evildoers’ heads and all, but I bloody hated flying down to Savannah. Every time I swung this way, I hit wet wind off the ocean flying through Low Country. It ate its way through me all the way to the bone. Enough to give a man the liking for one of those dumb-looking paratrooper jump-suits.

It took me a bit of time to finally find the right house in the predawn light, a small place with white siding and green roof, nothing special except for the damn industrial-strength ward on it. I circled it once and felt the magic defenses go down: Kate had seen me. Nothing to do but land, which I did, right on the path before the porch.

Kate sat on the porch with a book on her lap. She was on the pretty side, tan, dark-eyed, dark-haired. Exotic, even. Didn’t look like she was from around here, but then who did nowadays? Her sword lay next to her, a pale sliver. I paid attention to her eyes and the sword. She was a bit quick on the trigger with it.

“I always knew there was something odd about you, Teddy Jo,” she said, nodding at my wings.

“Likewise.”

I felt the magic coil about her. Too much power there. Way too much. She hid it well, though.

“How did it go?”

I shrugged. “Killed the snake responsible. Everybody’s alive. Your friends are in one piece. I expect they’ll celebrate in bed once they sleep it off.”

She arched an eyebrow. “They were together? Like together-together?”

“Looked that way to me.”

A grin bent her lips. Why now, she had a pretty smile. Who knew?

“I’ve got something for you here,” I said, and showed her a sack of apples.

She closed the book and set it aside. The title read, Lion, King of Cats: Exploring the Pride. I handed her the sack.

“Couldn’t find anybody else immune to Persephone’s immortality?” She chuckled.

“You guys don’t exactly grow on trees. I tried burning them, but fire does nothing to the damn things.”

“That’s because they are meant to be eaten or sacrificed.” She picked up her sword, cut a small chunk, and popped it into her mouth. “Tart. Think they’ll keep for a week? I’ve got company coming next Friday, and I’d like to make them into a pie.”

“Can the company handle Persephone’s Apples?”

“He can.”

I made of note of that he. Didn’t know there was anybody else in the area immune to Persephone’s Gift. If I had to put money on it, I’d bet it was the Beast Lord. Magic was a funny thing. The older it was, the stronger it was. True, Hades’ fire-power was of an ancient variety, but the magic Kate threw around was so much older, it gave me a start the first time I felt it. Now, I’d seen the Beast Lord once. He’d passed by me and I about choked. The magic that rolled off him was even older than Kate’s flavor. Primeval-not your regular shapeshifter. Enough to give a man a complex.

“I don’t see why they wouldn’t keep,” I said aloud. “Damn things are near indestructible.”

She lifted the sack. “Thanks!”

“Thank you.”

I pushed from the grass and shot into the sky. The sun was rising. Its rays warmed my wings and I headed back toward Atlanta. I had had a hard night. It was time to get home, drink me some coffee, and feed my dogs. Cerberus made sweet puppies, but the damn things sure ate a lot.

Blind Spot by Meljean Brook