

### Bump

by S.J. Finch

Copyright 2011 by S.J. Finch

Smashwords Edition

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." – Abraham Lincoln

### Chapter 1

Pine. Dampness. Dirt. If there was one aspect of camping that came anywhere close to redeeming all the others, it was the crisp scent of the mountains. The air was cleaner here, free from car exhaust, cheap cologne, cooking grease, and all the other smells that Ryan associated with the city. He inhaled again.

On either side of the narrow path loomed the forest. The trees were packed so densely that branches collided and interlocked into one giant wall of green.

Ryan peered through the trees and from the darkness, a strange roar erupted. It took him only a moment to realize however that this was not the hunting cry of some ferocious animal about to attack, it was something much worse.

Diesel.

He craned his neck to see past the trunk of a large tree. In this small sliver, he saw the unnatural gleam of an eighteen wheeler as it roared about its business on the highway that ran occasionally parallel to the forest path. The footpath and the highway were less than a hundred yards apart and Ryan smiled inwardly as he remembered one of the goals for this trip: getting back to nature.

He readjusted the waist strap on his old-fashioned, external-frame hiking backpack. The shift took some of the burden from his shoulders to his waist, but it did nothing to ease his other pains. His legs were sore and blisters were forming quickly on both feet, but the worst pain came from a cross-bar in the frame which dug right into the small of Ryan's back.

His father was cheap. "Practical" was probably a better term, but Ryan wasn't in a generous mood at the moment. This would be the first and last backpacking trip for the men of the Fisher family, and Ryan's father knew it. The other fathers had gone out and far overspent on brand new backpacks they had fooled themselves into thinking they'd ever use again. Ryan's father however had gone straight to the thrift store, and returned with a pair of ancient canvas monstrosities that Ryan was certain had once belonged to Colonel Kurtz.

The roaring truck was gone, and Ryan tried in vain to recapture the sense of peace and isolation he had felt before. It was no use.

"You all right, buddy?"

A booming, genial voice sounded from the trail bend ahead.

Mr. Lowery worked in public relations at Ryan's father's office, and the excursion had been his idea. Lowery had seen no flaw in the logic that, if three fathers were friends at work, their three sons would become instant friends when dragged along on a weekend camping trip. Still, Ryan liked the man. He was large and loud and very pleasant.

"I'm fine." Ryan replied. "Just enjoying the scenery."

"It is beautiful, isn't it?" Lowery replied with a red-faced smile.

Ryan wasn't very good at small talk, especially with adults in white-collar jobs that held no interest to him. Fortunately, Lowery enjoyed small talk enough for the both of them, so Ryan barely had to say a word beyond the occasional affirmation or semi-forced laugh.

They trudged along the path and enjoyed the changing landscape while trying to avoid the roots and rocks that poked out of the ground at odd angles.

Ryan's sneakers were out of their element, but they had served him faithfully enough so far. Now however, the terrain had changed from dry and level to slippery and inclined.

He gingerly took his first step into a shallow ditch that had been carved out by a low, narrow stream. The side of the ditch was muddy, and against the worn rubber sole of Ryan's sneaker, it provided no traction.

The step went bad and Ryan's foot twisted in a way it was not meant to. He pitched forward and couldn't bring his other foot up in time to right himself, so Ryan landed face-down in the stream with a thudding splash.

The landing itself wasn't bad. The fifty-pound backpack that landed on top of him was. Lowery rushed to his side.

"Whoa whoa, easy.You okay?"

Ryan pushed himself out of the stream and nodded. He was embarrassed and he was soaking, but he hadn't broken anything. His ankle, however, throbbed angrily.

"Nothing major, just twisted my ankle."

"I can imagine. Spill like that, you're lucky it was just a twist. Good thing this happened so close to camp, it could've been a lot worse. Stay here, I'll run ahead and get Carl and your dad."

The last thing Ryan wanted was everyone staring down at him while he was helpless in the mud. On the other hand, the first thing he wanted was the Ace bandage out of Carl's first aid kit, so he was willing to endure the embarrassment.

Lowery shrugged off his pack and set off huffing down the trail as he yelled for the rest of the group to stop.

A moment later, the man returned with Carl Burris and Ryan's father. Joseph Fisher didn't much care for Burris, and Ryan had heard many a complaint about the man over the family dinner table. Nevertheless, Ryan had been able to piece together that Burris had some clout within the office, so declining his invitation for a weekend excursion would not have been a wise move. Ryan didn't care much about the wild world of inter-office politics; only when they forced him into a backpacking trip.

"You okay, Ryan?" Joseph asked his son as Burris wrapped the ankle.

"Never better."

Ryan's father pulled him out of the stream bed and helped him hobble the last half mile to the place they were to make camp. Lowery, Burris, and their sons had gone on ahead, and a fire was already crackling in the stillness of the twilight. Its small flames cast flickering shadows on Burris who was busy cursing at his brand new, "easy-assemble" tent. Night was falling quickly.

Ryan eased himself into a canvas camp chair and began to count the hours until he could go home.

He had tried to do right by his father and play nice. He had introduced himself to Nick Burris, who had grunted an unintelligible reply without looking up from his phone. Then Ryan had tried to strike up a conversation with Eddie Lowery, who had pointedly put in earphones. Ryan had done his best, but he wasn't sure what he was expecting to happen. The boys all went to different schools and lived in different neighborhoods; having fathers who worked together wasn't fodder for riveting conversation. Ryan had resigned himself to a rather lonely weekend, and had instead begun focusing on the fact that the trip was almost over. He'd be going to bed soon and, with a little luck, his ankle would be well enough to hike out early the next morning.

Their camp was at the edge of a large meadow, one of the few clearings Ryan had seen in the dense forest. The setting sun muted the natural colors of his surroundings and substituted its own vibrant yellows and oranges. The patches of pale grass at Ryan's feet turned a nearly-transparent, flaming red in the dying sunlight and they cast long, spiked shadows across the dirt. Through the trees on one side, Ryan could just make out the shimmering reflection of the sun on a small lake. He knew that opposite the lake was the highway, but even the thin stand of trees between them was enough to hide the blacktop from Ryan's view. On either side of the meadow rose the forest, thick and dark even at midday, but now as the sun continued to set, Ryan couldn't distinguish shape from shadow more than a few feet beyond the tree line.

He felt a gentle breeze pick up, and he could just make out the sound of it whistling through the countless branches. Much more audible were the sounds of Burris' mild profanities, the crackling fire, and Ryan's father constructing their small pup tent behind him.

Even these sounds however, became muffled whenever a car roared past them on the nearby road. Ryan smiled.

Joseph Fisher had their tent up in a matter of minutes, and he helped Ryan crawl inside.

"Having fun yet?" His father asked with a smirk. "I think we're going to play some capture-the-flag. Are you okay for me to leave?"

Ryan smiled. "Yeah, I'm really fine. Go do your thing, show Mr. Burris who was CTF champ at Camp Maplewood four years running."

Joseph Fisher grinned back. "And here I thought you never listened to any of my old camp stories."

***

Out in the woods, "night" meant something very different than it did in the city. Stars shone through the murky canopy like countless pinholes in a black sheet. The moon seemed bigger out here, and its bluish light fell softly on Ryan and the dying fire.

He had gotten bored of staring off into the nylon of his tent, and had decided to hobble out and take his seat next to the fire pit. He poked and prodded at the embers, but Lowery hadn't gotten nearly enough firewood to last them the night, so Ryan had occupied himself watching the flames burn slowly down to coals.

It was chilly, the first real bite of autumn, and Ryan hugged himself more closely, debating just how many body parts he'd give up to be back home.

Apart from the aromas, the other advantage of the woods was the silence. Traffic on the highway had stopped almost completely, and with none of the other campers around, Ryan reveled in the quiet. He leaned his head back in the canvas chair and closed his eyes, listening.

He let the silence wash over him, and despite the cold, even allowed himself to doze off for a moment. Then however, something came to him on the breeze: the faintest whisper out of the woods. Ryan's eyes shot open and he strained his hearing for a second sound that never came. The first had sounded almost like a man's scream: too ghastly and pained to be a flag-capturer's cry of victory. After a moment however, Ryan dismissed what he had heard entirely. He had been half asleep at the time,and the forest at night was home to all kinds of mysterious sounds that, nonetheless, posed no real threat. Still, the split-second event had planted in Ryan's imagination the possibility that there was a serial killer roaming the shadowy woods with a large hatchet. The silence was slightly less comforting now.

Ryan crawled back inside the tent and dug around in his pack. He pulled out a small paperback that he knew he'd never finish. It had been recommended to him by his mother, whose taste he generally trusted, but Ryan knew that as soon as he was back in the real world, the siren song of movies, TV, and video games would lure him away from literature. It always did. He liked to give recreational reading the old college try every few weeks, just to make himself feel better, but he rarely stuck with it faithfully enough to finish more than one book every couple months.

He had delved half a chapter in when the batteries in his flashlight began to fade. Ryan hadn't found himself enthralled by the pages anyway, so he put away the book and crawled into his sleeping bag to begin the arduous battle of falling asleep in a tent.

### Chapter 2

Ryan awoke with a start. The moonlight diffused through the wall of the tent cast a dull glow on his backpack and sleeping bag. He didn't have a clue what time it was, or how long he had been asleep. He hadn't wanted to worry about losing or breaking a wristwatch, so he hadn't worn one, and his phone was where he had forgotten it in the car at the trail head.

He knew that at least a few hours had passed, since his father was now snoring soundly in the bag next to him. What Ryan wanted more than anything was to fall back to sleep. The sooner he fell asleep, the sooner it would be morning and the sooner he could leave; get back to civilized life and the real world.

Trying to get more comfortable, Ryan shifted and squirmed in his sleeping bag and discovered why he had woken up: a large rock was positioned directly beneath his bag. All night long it had been digging into the exact same spot on his back as the cross bar on his cheap backpack. No matter which way he turned, the rock was still there and his back was still sore.

After a few more futile minutes of tossing and turning, Ryan gave up. He sat up in his sleeping bag and stretched out his back as best he could in the small tent. He remained that way for a long time: awake and bored.

As quietly as he could, Ryan unzipped his sleeping bag and threw it off his lower half. He lifted his injured foot and gently unraveled the bandage. When it was off, Ryan was surprised by how much mobility he had. It no longer hurt so much to move. He decided to work it a bit, to put some weight on it and see how it felt. Ryan pulled on his shoes and awkwardly crawled over his father. He unzipped the door, slowly as to not make too much noise, and clambered out.

The night was cold, much colder than Ryan had expected. His shivering breath came out in dense white clouds and he clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. This made his warm sleeping bag, rock or no rock, seem all the more inviting. Still, he knew sleep was a lost cause for the moment, so first he zipped up the tent and then he zipped up his sweatshirt.

His foot seemed to be fine to stand on, so he took a few cautious steps. At first it was painful and stiff, but the more he walked, the easier it became.

Ryan looked up and once again peered into the woods. The blue light of the big round moon illuminated the entire meadow, but the light couldn't penetrate the murky blackness of the trees. Even so, as Ryan peered into the forest, he no longer felt any fear. He felt at home in the meadow now, as though he had been here long enough that he was no longer so out of place.

By extension, the forest also seemed less intimidating. Ryan felt at peace with his surroundings and he was sure that in a place as beautiful and serene as this, nothing was going to harm him. A few hours in a nylon tent made Ryan feel as if Nature had accepted him as one of her own, and she didn't harm her own.

As if to prove this point to himself, Ryan began to walk towards the forest. He had no clear indication of where to go, or why for that matter, so he chose to travel directly away from the highway and off to one side of the lake: the largest patch of the densest forest he could find.

It took Ryan long enough to reach the edge of the meadow that by the time he got there, he was already questioning his decision. The peaceful feeling was fading fast. Perhaps it was because he was waking up, and reason was quickly returning to his brain, or perhaps because looking at the forest from the middle of a clear, safe meadow was a much different experience than standing four feet from its gaping maw. Still, Ryan hadn't forgotten the sense of peace and isolation he had experienced earlier that afternoon, and it was such an uncommon feeling in suburban life that he wanted to feel it at least once more before he left in the morning.

As he crossed the dark threshold into the woods, Ryan was all too aware of how ironic it would be if he _did_ run into a hatchet-wielding killer. He had seen the movies: it was always the teenager who can't run and wanders off alone that gets killed first. He smiled in the darkness.

Though the moonlight had served him well this far, the thick forest canopy now darkened his path considerably. Ryan fished into his sweatshirt pocket and produced his dying flashlight. He clicked it on and swept the weak beam in front of him. He picked his way through the brush, carefully but steadily.

Ryan didn't know how far into the woods he needed to go, or even how he would know when he was far enough, but he did know that getting out of sight of the meadow and especially the highway was the first step.

Another breeze wound its way through the trees and pushed all the branches into a single, unified swaying motion. Everything in the forest, save Ryan, was moving in the same pattern. The familiar feeling began to creep back into his gut: that he shouldn't be here, that he wasn't welcome. Camping for one night in a tent didn't mean he now belonged here, it meant he was still an outsider who had no right to stomp through this world.

As he moved through the forest, Ryan once or twice thought he saw something else that moved against the swaying pattern of the foliage. It was on the very periphery of his vision however, and the movement was so quick that Ryan could not be sure he had seen anything at all. As he continued on, he thought he saw the movement again, but without any sound of twigs snapping or underbrush being pushed aside, Ryan was sure it was nothing more than the breeze.

He continued on, making sure to keep the highway behind him so he would know how to get back. Soon he came to a small clearing in the trees, no more than twenty feet across. He looked over his shoulder and happily realized that the only thing he could see was the forest, with no sign of the meadow or the camp. He walked to the middle of the clearing and took a long look around as he inhaled deeply. Ryan sat down on a fallen log and closed his eyes. He listened to the sound of his own breathing, the wind rustling the leaves, the swishing noises of his clothes when he made even the tiniest movement. The smells of wet soil and fresh pine came to him on the chilly night air. The silence was so deep, so engulfing, the chill so constant, Ryan may as well have been at the bottom of the ocean or the vast expanse of space. He took another long breath through his nose and held it for a moment before letting it slowly out through his mouth. The white mist of exhaled breath hung in the air then dispersed in a thousand different directions. So focused was Ryan on his breathing, on the smells that each breath brought him, and on the sound that the cool air made as it rushed through his nostrils, that he didn't notice at first when all the other sounds around him faded away into an uneasy nothingness.

It was as though someone had turned down the volume on a television and all sound had seeped out of the clearing at the same moment. Everything seemed to stop. There were no chirps of insects, no rustling of birds or squirrels, not even the wind made a sound. Instead the breeze swirled around Ryan and slid silently through the underbrush like a ghost.

His breathing was shallow, his heartbeat had quickened, and Ryan didn't know why. Nothing _seemed_ to have changed, but still he knew that everything was very, very different.

Suddenly, on some primal level in a way he had never felt before, the answer came to him: he was no longer alone. It was as though he was aware of his presence in this place, and in the next instant, he was aware of another presence as well. On the same primal level, where millions of years of evolution and animal instinct were contained, a conclusion was formed. This change in environment pointed his animal mind in one direction: with a chill shuddering through him colder than anything the night air could ever muster, Ryan realized he wasn't the only outsider in these woods.

His reaction was not what he expected. He didn't immediately run for the camp, in fact he didn't do anything at all. Ryan was afraid, that much was certain, but the instincts that screamed at him to run were being beaten back by his own, very human curiosity. The animal in him was ready to fight or flee, but Ryan knew he couldn't make that decision until he had more information. In the back of his mind, far from his conscious brain, Ryan knew that neither option was going to help him. His ankle wouldn't let him run anywhere fast enough to escape, and he certainly wasn't going to be able to fight any creature of these woods that was big enough to consider him prey. Elsewhere in his brain, he was inwardly chuckling at himself; a defeated, masochistic laugh as that tiny part of him realized the irony of it all. The injured teenager in the middle of the woods. Can't run. Can't fight. First to die.

In the next instant, contrary to what Ryan had often heard, time did not slow down. Rather, his brain sped up. Things happened in the blink of an eye, but Ryan's brain was alert and ready to process all of it. Without warning, without any sound, Ryan felt something huge crash into him from behind.

He didn't just feel the impact however. Ryan's adrenaline-drenched brain fed him more data than he could process: the body heat of his attacker, the sinewy muscles rippling beneath coarse fur, the hot, musty breath on the back of his neck, and the large claws that ripped through his sweatshirt and raked searing pain into his side. It all happened in an instant, in less time than it took for a bolt of lightning to streak through the sky, then it was all gone. Gone, except for the blinding pain in his side and the feeling of hot blood pumping out of the wound.

Ryan pushed the pain out of his mind long enough to realize that he was on the ground, and that the wind had been knocked out of him. As he gulped for air that never seemed to reach his lungs, his eyes fell to the four identical slashes on his right side: each one at least six inches in length. He lifted his head as high as he could and looked around at his blurring landscape. He saw nothing. The animal in him had come to the same decision as his human mind: this was not a fight he could win. His lungs returned to normal and he inhaled noisy gulps of air. His breathing steadied, though still quick and shallow from the terror. Ryan lay there waiting for a second attack that he knew would come at any moment, the attack that he knew would likely be the last thing he'd ever feel.

The hushed seconds ticked by...no attack came. Ryan strained, over the sound of the blood pounding in his ears, to hear any sort of noise that might signal his attacker's return. He knew of course, that whatever it was didn't make noise. The first attack had come in utter silence, and the next one would be the same way. With another gasp of breath, Ryan blinked the tears out of his eyes and summoned all the strength he could to roll himself onto his stomach. The twigs and fallen pine needles poked into his skin as he forced himself up on all fours. He took a few more deep breaths and pushed away from the ground, shakily clambering to his feet. As he clutched his side with one hand and his aching stomach with the other, Ryan stumbled off into the woods in a direction he could only pray was the right one. His internal sense of direction had been erased by terror, and he had no way of knowing which way he had come.

Now that he was on his feet, Ryan's adrenaline pumped faster than it ever had before. It dulled the pain in his side to a distant roar, and the protests of his ankle were drowned out completely. Even so, the foot was still injured. Ryan hadn't made it more than ten feet outside the clearing when he buckled again. His ankle pitched him forward and Ryan landed on his hands and knees in the wet underbrush. His hands stung from the impact and Ryan felt as though he had used the last of his strength getting to his feet the first time. He doubted he had it in him to get back upright. Then the second attack came.

Just as suddenly as before, Ryan was hit again. It was the same freight train impact slamming into his left side, opposite the slash wounds. He heard two of his ribs break a split-second before he felt them. Then he felt them.

The impact sent Ryan sprawling with his arms and legs twisted about and forced at odd angles. He landed with a sickening thump in the dirt nearly six feet from where he had been hit. His eyes instinctively shot open to brace for another attack, but there wasn't one. He saw nothing. There was no sign of his attacker: no hulking figure emerging from the shadows, no rustle of underbrush. Ryan couldn't even spot a single branch that had been disturbed or even one dead, fallen leaf that had been kicked up and misplaced. It was as though the shadows themselves were rising up to attack him, then fading away just as quickly. The only evidence that anything had happened at all was Ryan's own, broken body. That and the stillness.

He didn't know how long he lay there, crumpled in dirt that was becoming soaked with his blood. The pain made time meaningless. The pain was all he knew, as if it was all he had ever known. He couldn't think of a time in his life that he hadn't been lying in this forest in excruciating pain.

Then something strange began to creep back from the recesses of his mind, some last spark of human will or instinctual self-preservation. Something gave him the idea that he could get up, that he could keep going. Ryan would have preferred to stay there and die.

He tried to, in fact. He wept silently into the damp earth and begged his mind, his body, to let him die. However, that same spark would not comply and after a moment Ryan felt as though his body were being run by remote. He hadn't told his body to push itself up against a fallen tree. He hadn't told it to inch up, little by little, until he was lying across the large log, almost standing. He hadn't told his body to gingerly put weight on both feet, then stagger away from the support of the log. He certainly hadn't told his body to take off at a slow, hobbling run. Ryan's body however, had taken over. His mind and body had flipped on the autopilot and started feeding even more adrenaline into his system to give Ryan a will he never knew he had.

He was bent nearly double and both arms clutched his sides, but he was moving. He was breathing. He was living.

Low-hanging branches scraped his exposed face and arms and left shallow cuts all over him, but he didn't feel them. In fact, Ryan couldn't feel much of anything. His every thought, every action, was consumed by one goal: to keep moving. There was no room for pain, no room for fear. The forest floor was just as treacherous as it had always been; exposed roots and large rocks were everywhere, but Ryan was moving in a way he never had before. Every step in front of him was immediately analyzed: where best to step, what needed to be avoided, where it would make the next step fall. Just as immediately, he took the step and analyzed the next one. He knew, mind and body, that the only way he was going to stand a chance of escaping with his life was to keep running. And so he did.

Ryan was discovering the energy and reflexes that only manifested to those whose lives hung in the balance; he was discovering the very limits of human potential. His pursuer however, was not human. Ryan leapt over a mossy log and, just as he landed, he was hit a third time. This time the attack came from behind, and it was more than a collision.

As it hit, the thing sunk its teeth into Ryan's arm directly between the elbow and the shoulder. Twin rows of white-hot knives were driven into his arm with searing pain and he felt the hot breath and sticky saliva.

Just as suddenly as the teeth had stabbed into flesh, they were ripped out and Ryan was again alone. He lay there, driven into the ground for a third time. While his arm burned with pain, something else occurred to Ryan: whatever this thing was, it could have killed him at any time. This creature was faster, stronger, and more at home in the forest than Ryan could ever be. He couldn't help but wonder why he was still alive. If he was being hunted for food, why hadn't he been eaten? If he was being hunted for sport, what kind of animal would do such a thing? Ryan was being toyed with, but he didn't know why. The number of minutes that made up the rest of his life, the number of breaths he would ever breathe, were now up to some wild animal that Ryan knew he would probably never even see, let alone stop. Panting on the ground, his breath unsteady and ragged, all strength was gone from him. Ryan gave up.

The pain in his ankle had returned with a vengeance and was shooting up and down the length of his leg. The blood seeping from the gashes in his side had slowed not because it was clotting, but because Ryan didn't have much blood left in him to bleed. Every time he inhaled, he wasn't sure if he would live long enough to exhale. He could pass out at any time, a broken rib could puncture a lung at any moment, and the searing hot pain from the bite in his arm made it feel as if the giant teeth were still in there.

His strength had left him long ago, but the residual adrenaline and that tiny spark of will had not. Standing was out of the question, so Ryan began to crawl.

He began to squirm through the underbrush even though he didn't have a clue where he was going. Even if he had, Ryan knew it wouldn't matter. Even if the campsite was ten feet away and even if his shadowy murderer didn't return, he'd never make it out alive. Ten feet might as well have been ten miles, and he knew that any minute the thing was going to drop down onto him and finish him off. It had had its fun, Ryan was beaten, dying. All that was left was the killing blow, and Ryan found himself relishing the thought of a quick death.

Still, he kept pushing, kept crawling. Dirt worked its way into his nose and mouth, into his open wounds. He pushed and pushed, slithering between trees and rocks until suddenly the forest opened up and there were no more trees in front of him. He had reached the blacktop of the highway and for the briefest of moments Ryan allowed a faint glimmer of hope to worm its way back into his mind. He'd be found here, rescued. A truck driver who used to work as an army medic would find him here on the road and pull him into his cab. He'd give Ryan a shot of morphine and rush him to the hospital. They'd save his life and Ryan would wake up warm in freshly-laundered sheets. He'd see college, he'd see a wife, kids, grandkids. The truck driver was just around that next corner, he was sure of it. Ryan could almost hear the rumbling of the engine.

The treetops no longer obscured the moon and it shone brightly on Ryan and reflected dully off the pavement. He squinted at it through tear-soaked, mud-stained eyes until his surroundings suddenly darkened. An impossibly large shadow had fallen over him. It had come between Ryan and the moon, smothering him in darkness.

The creature approached slowly; it had won and it knew it. The hunt was over, the prey was beaten. Ryan opened his eyes a fraction more as the thing stepped fully onto the highway, and Ryan got his first look at his killer.

It was not, as he had first thought, a grizzly. It was not, for that matter, like anything Ryan had ever seen before. It was covered from head to toe in coarse brown fur, and it walked on four legs, but it looked as if it had been designed to walk on two. All four of its limbs seemed to be the same length, but the hind legs looked as though they were perpetually bent at the knees. Its forelegs, now that Ryan really looked at them, weren't legs at all, but arms. In fact, its entire upper body was strangely humanoid, with a near-human torso and long muscular arms that ended in five-fingered hands. Each long, powerful finger, however, ended in a wicked claw that Ryan knew firsthand was razor sharp. Strange as it seemed, even to Ryan, the head was the least bizarre: it was that of a wolf.

The creature sauntered closer. Its brown fur rippled in the breeze as it padded onto the blacktop in complete silence. The moon shone into the creature's terrifying yellow eyes and Ryan saw something, despite everything else he had seen tonight, that he was not expecting: intelligence. In a way he couldn't explain and didn't understand, Ryan knew these were not the eyes of some savage beast. These eyes were thinking, calculating, feeling. Feeling perhaps a murderous bloodlust or uncontrollable, carnivorous excitement, but feeling nonetheless.

It had closed the final gap and stopped, looming over his frozen form. It lowered its long snout and inhaled the dying boy's scent. Ryan smelled the beast's wet fur and felt its hot, putrid breath. It reared back onto two legs and rose to its full height of at least seven feet. The thing flattened its ears and opened its jaws wide, ready to close them around Ryan's neck. It savored the moment as its lips drew back to reveal long yellow fangs that glinted in the pale light. The head hung there for a moment, as if frozen, but in a split second more, with the same blinding speed, it plunged its head down upon him.

As Ryan's conscious mind braced for impact and the inevitable end, his instincts once again took over. His hand closed around a large rock that sat on the side of the road, just within his reach. Weak fingers closed around the rock and with all the strength he had left, Ryan wrenched his arm upward and brought the stone smashing into the creature's skull. The rock made contact with a dull thud and the creature's head snapped to one side. It emitted a low snarl of surprise, but Ryan's last hope had proven fatally ineffective. The beast was stunned for only a moment, and then it let out another fierce snarl as it lunged down upon him once again.

Ryan closed his eyes and waited for the final bite to come. He waited to feel the jaws around his neck, waited for the dozens of tiny puncture wounds that would be followed closely by his jugular being ripped from his throat.

Through his closed eyelids, Ryan saw a spreading redness that he knew was a light. The redness grew and intensified but Ryan refused to open his eyes. He didn't want to watch the creature kill him, not if he had a choice.

Blood continued to pour from his wounds and stain the asphalt beneath him. Ryan knew that after this thing was done with his corpse, those stains would be all that was left of him; the only physical evidence that Ryan Fisher had ever existed. He felt himself losing consciousness. He welcomed it. The pain was nearly over. Even brighter redness, then, blackness.

### Chapter 3

Plastic. Latex. Iodine. If this was what the afterlife smelled like, Ryan wasn't so sure he wanted to be here. He was still too groggy to force his eyes open, but his other senses filled in the gaps. He heard the faint, steady beeping of his heart monitor, the rustle of feet back and forth on linoleum in a nearby hallway, and a soft snoring somewhere to his left.

The redness beating against his closed eyelids gave way to blinding whiteness when he finally mustered the strength to peel them apart. He opened his eyes a millimeter at a time to give his retinas time to adjust. As soon as they did, Ryan's suspicions were confirmed: hospital room, heart monitor, snoring father.

The bright light of day shone around the edges of the light-blocking blinds, though which day it actually was, Ryan had no idea. The shafts of sunlight that made it past the blinds' defenses fell onto gray-flecked linoleum and white hospital bed sheets. High on the wall across from him, Ryan saw an outdated television. To his right, across from the window, was a large wooden door slightly ajar, which led to a tiny bathroom. Next to it was another door, through which Ryan had heard the sound of pattering feet. A sliver of light was visible at the bottom of the door and the beam was occasionally interrupted by shadow as doctors and nurses rushed back and forth.

Ryan turned his head to look at his father. Moving his head in this way was one of the few movements Ryan could make that wouldn't cause pain to shoot through his entire body. Some of the pain was dull and pounding, some of it was sharp and bracing. None of it was pleasant.

He looked past the canopy of IV bags and glowing monitors. His father's clothes were different than the ones he had brought camping, but they were just as wrinkled and unwashed. Joseph's thinning, dirty-blonde hair was ruffled and sticking out at odd angles, as if he had slept against a number of hard surfaces for a number of nights. His square jaw was covered in a sparse beard, and Ryan could tell his father had been here, probably in that exact chair, for at least a few days.

Trying not to disturb his father, Ryan occupied himself by examining the monitors and readouts that were within his limited field of vision. He had seen enough reruns of _ER_ to guess at what most of the acronyms meant, but pop culture had failed to teach him about the attached numbers, and whether they meant he was getting better or worse.

As Ryan became more awake, he became less interested in where he was and more interested in how he had gotten here. He spotted the nurse call button laying on the bed next to him, but his left hand may just as well been made of stone. The creature's stinging bite had been to his left arm, and the pain there was worst of all. Ryan took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to send some of the pounding pain out with it. He was bracing himself for the agony of reaching with his other hand, until a sudden noise froze him where he was.

He heard the soft click of the door being opened carefully. Ryan's heart leapt in his chest and the monitors began to beep to an urgent crescendo. He may not have known how he had gotten to the hospital or how he was even still alive, but Ryan hadn't forgotten the woods or the creature, not a single detail. In that instant, he was certain the thing had come back for him, that it had found him again and that it was going to kill him here and now. The light from under the door expanded for a moment, then receded as it was closed again. His mother entered with a large cup of coffee in one hand and eight-year-old Ethan Fisher's hand in the other.

His brother was first to notice that Ryan was awake.

"Mom" Ethan whispered, nodding to Ryan as he tugged on her hand.

"Ryan! You're awake!"

"Either that or people were really, really wrong about what happens when you die." He replied, his throat scratchy from lack of fluids and under-use.

Karen Fisher set her coffee down on the first surface she could find and attacked with an instinctive hug.

"Knock that off! You don't get to joke about Death when you've been on his doorstep for the last two days!" She scolded unconvincingly.

"I'll tell you, it's a doorstep that gets a bad rep. Really well-landscaped, you'd appreciate what he can do with just a few begonias."

She pulled back from the hug with a hand on each of his shoulders. She looked at him with a mask of frustration, but her worry and relief showed through.

"Can't you be serious for two seconds?" She pleaded.

"I was a few minutes ago. For a whole two seconds. I counted."

The truth was, Ryan didn't know why he was making jokes. It wasn't unusual at all, in fact it was par for the course, but if there were ever a time for him to break down and sob in his mother's arms, he figured this was probably it. It took him only a moment however, to realize that sobbing may not have been the right response. He was alive. He was, for the most part, in one piece. His family was here around him and, more importantly, he was still around to be with his family. Ryan was still terrified about what had happened and he couldn't explain what he had seen or how he had gotten here, but all those fears and doubts were momentarily replaced by a sense of contentment that washed over him. He was making jokes because he was happy, odd as those jokes may have been.

Karen contented herself to perch on the edge of his bed and smooth his covers automatically with her hand.

"How are you feeling?" She asked.

"It hurts." Ryan replied.

"What does?"

"Yes."

"Aw sweetie, I'm so sorry. Okay," she replied as she stood up. "You sit there, don't move. Or move. Whatever hurts the least. I'll go get the nurse and we'll have her up the painkillers."

It was as blissful a suggestion as any Ryan had ever heard, and there was only one thing on earth he wanted more: answers

"No, wait, Mom!" But she was already out the door.

The commotion had woken Ryan's father. The man's eyes had dark circles and puffy bags beneath them.

"Hey Ry." He said. Joseph's demeanor was characteristically subdued, but Ryan could see a mixture of anxiety and relief twinkling from behind the man's deep blue eyes. "Welcome back."

"Thanks...though nobody has told me what happened." Ryan's voice was starting to feel less scratchy the more he used it.

"You probably know more than we do." His father replied. "All I know is what the doctors told us: some young family brought you in. Said they were driving down the highway, through the mountains in the middle of the night, on a road trip somewhere, and they saw you lying in the road being attacked by a bear. I guess their car scared the thing off, but you were already hurt pretty bad."

It wasn't a bear. He knew that much. It couldn't have been. He wanted out of the hospital though, and Ryan knew that ranting about giant wolf-creatures wasn't the way to get _out_ of a hospital. Quite the opposite.

"But how did _you_ find me?" He interrupted.

"Well, the family was afraid to move you. Said you were bleeding from all kinds of places and they didn't want to cause any more damage. They called 911 and got the paramedics to fly you in here. The sound of the helicopter woke us. When we couldn't find you anywhere around the camp, I called Mom to pick me up. It's a good thing we found you here too, we were about two minutes from calling in search and rescue and you would've been here under 'John Doe' the whole time."

"When was that? I mean, how long have I been here?" Ryan asked.

"Two days. It's Monday morning...almost afternoon."

"Well thanks for finding me, I could never afford this place without your insurance."

His father smiled and the hints of small tears gathered at the corners of his weary eyes. He put a hand on Ryan's arm and left it there.

A kind-eyed, matronly nurse had come into the room and was going about the business of giving Ryan more morphine. The pain had been slowly building the more Ryan exerted himself and he was content enough with his father's story not to ask any more questions at the moment. He felt his brain go fuzzy and his eyelids began to droop almost instantly. Ryan was in a deep, medicated sleep before his eyes were even fully closed.

***

When he awoke again, not much had changed. The chair his father had been in was now occupied by his mother, who had her nose in the latest bestselling paperback.

"Hey" he muttered, still feeling the effects of the morphine.

His mother's head snapped up from her book.

"Hi sweetheart. How are you feeling?"

"Morphine...a-ok in my book." He replied as the dull, thudding pain started returning to his body. "What time is it?"

"It's a little after three...in the afternoon." She added hastily.

"Still Monday?" Ryan asked.

"Still Monday. Feel like sitting up?"

He didn't, but he needed water now more than ever. And some food.

"Yeah, sure." He began to move into a sitting position, but his mother stopped him.

"No, no. Check it out." She pressed a button on a side panel of Ryan's bed and he heard the faint sound of a small electric motor. The top half of the bed rose to prop Ryan up with almost no effort on his part.

"Very cool." Ryan remarked. "Could you get me a glass of water?"

"Ethan will be thrilled that you're awake." She said as she rose from the chair and went to the small sink to fill a plastic cup. "He's been waiting to play with this thing for days."

Ryan smiled.

She handed him the water and he drank in noisy gulps. His mother crossed the room and tugged open the blinds. There was a tree outside his window, but that was all Ryan could see from where he was sitting. The movement of the blinds startled the birds sitting on the branch near the window, two sparrows and a larger black bird, and they all flew off excitedly. The room looked better bathed in sunlight: the linoleum seemed more polished, the pastel green upholstery of the chairs, brighter.

"Your friends came by again this afternoon. Yesterday too." His mother explained as she ducked into the small bathroom and produced a large bouquet of brightly colored balloons. "They were getting in the nurse's way, so we put them in here until you woke up."

Ryan hadn't even thought about his friends until now, and he felt warmth and gratitude bubbling up inside him. Amidst the regular balloons, Ryan saw a single silvery mylar. It slowly rotated, by the hand of some unknown force, to face him. Ryan read _It's a Boy!_ and chuckled aloud to himself. The huge collection of balloons had undoubtedly been Vanessa's idea, but the mylar was clearly Eli's contribution.

"The doctor said to let him know as soon as you were awake again. I think he has some questions for you." She said. Under her breath, as she walked out the door, she continued to herself "I hope one of them is 'how on earth could three grown men allow a teenager to...". Then she was gone. Ryan knew she had made up her mind never to let him leave the house again. School would be done online. Friends would have to go through a full decontamination shower every time they came over. A giant plastic bubble would no doubt be erected over the entire house by the time he was discharged from the hospital.

His mother returned a moment later with a man in a white coat. He was young, too young, Ryan thought, to be a real doctor, and he looked more like a movie star than an MD. He looked like one of the TV doctors on the shows that had taught Ryan so much about acronyms.

The man's jaw was strong and held just enough stubble for it to be fashionable. His eyes were the same khaki brown as his immaculately-pressed pants, and they were set deep behind high cheekbones that seemed to be made for laughing and smiling. His cheeks themselves had a flushed, almost ruddy hue that only served to make him look more cheerful. His hair was a light brown, almost dirty blonde like Ryan's, though this man's hair was a few shades lighter. His hair contrasted with his skin, which looked as if it bore years of natural tan. Underneath his lab coat he wore a white shirt and around his neck was an expensive-looking blue and yellow tie.

He extended his hand to Ryan.

"Ryan, my name is Doctor Webster. I'm the one that put you back together after Mr. and Mrs. Coyle found what was left of you out on the highway." He smiled warmly and Ryan couldn't help the sense of comfort and ease he felt as he shook the man's hand.

"Ah, well, thanks for that." Ryan replied.

"My pleasure."

"One question though." Ryan began.

"Sure."

"Robot body parts. Has that ship sailed, in a medical sense, or can I still get in on that?"

The doctor chuckled. "I can definitely put you on the waiting list. Fair enough? Now, I'd like to hear your side of what happened, if you feel up to it."

As a general rule, Ryan didn't much like doctors. Having to go to one was never a good sign, and for some reason, they were legally allowed to put their hands in places nobody should ever put hands. Still, Ryan was finding it difficult not to like this man.

"I can only tell you what I remember."

Ryan recounted, for what he knew would be the first of a hundred more times to come, the sequence of events. He told the truth, making sure to emphasize that it was no one's fault but his own. The midnight hike, the clearing, the attack, the running, all of it. The only thing he lied about was what exactly had attacked him.

"I guess it was probably a bear, I mean I never actually got a good look. It could have been anything: bear, mountain lion..." Ryan hesitated "...wolf."

"Even when it was right up on you, you still weren't sure?" Dr. Webster asked.

"Not really, I was just kinda flailing around."

The doctor hesitated. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Ryan wasn't sure if Webster had noticed a hole in his story or if he was just processing the details. He asked the same question again.

"And that's all you saw? You don't know if it was a bear or cougar or...?" Webster's brown eyes were locked onto Ryan's as his voice intentionally trailed off, leaving the question open. His movie star face was a mask of concern and interest. Ryan wondered if he was just being paranoid about the man.

"I really couldn't say. That's all I saw." he replied simply.

Apparently satisfied, Dr. Webster's face cracked into a dazzling smile.

"Okay then. I'll get this all down in my report. Call me if you need anything, and I'm serious about that. If the pain gets worse or if it changes, or if you start experiencing any new symptoms, let me know." He turned to leave.

"Doctor" Ryan's mother asked, "when will we be able to take him home?"

"I want to keep an eye on him for another couple days; make sure all the stitches and everything hold, but after that I think we can discharge him."

"Thank you."

"Yeah, thanks for everything." Ryan added.

Webster nodded, smiled warmly, and pulled the door shut behind him.

Ryan turned to his mother. "So?"

"So what?" she asked.

"So I'm waiting for your big lecture about wilderness safety and the buddy system. I'm sure you've been working on it furiously for days. Is that, are those note cards in your purse? Two words Mom: PowerPoint."

His mother rolled her eyes and then gave a grudging smile. "I think I liked it better when you were asleep."

Ryan grinned.

"Vanessa sent me a text a while ago," she continued. "I think she and Eli were on their way. Want me to see if they're here yet?"

Ryan was not entirely comfortable with his mother and his friends texting each other, but at the moment, if it meant he got to see his friends, he could live with it.

"Yeah, I'd love to see them."

His mother patted his hand and left the room.

Five minutes later, Ryan heard two pairs of footsteps squeaking down the linoleum hallway outside his door. One pair of feet bore the unmistakable sound of flip flops, Eli's signature footwear, and the other, much less audible pair of worn canvas sneakers belonged to Vanessa. The door to his room flew open and Vanessa burst in, a whirling tornado of equal parts anger and concern. Eli entered a few steps behind her, not wanting to get caught in Vanessa's emotional crosshairs.

She crossed the small room in an instant, and she reached Ryan's bedside without breaking stride. Ryan didn't know whether she was going to punch him or hug him; she seemed equally ready to do both. Vanessa came to a skittering stop and threw her slender arms around his neck. She didn't care if she hurt him and at that point, neither did Ryan. Her long blonde hair cascaded around them both as she held him tightly.

Ryan hugged her back and inhaled. She smelled good. Really good. Much better than the hospital. Lavender, or maybe lilac. Ryan could never keep those two straight. It was a scent that seemed to emanate from her very skin: not artificial or overpowering like the body lotions or lip balms that most girls wore, but a subtle, pure aroma. Ryan had known Vanessa for years and she had always smelled the same way. Her skin smelled like it, her clothes smelled like it, her bedroom smelled like it. Ryan had never once asked how she did it, what she used. Perhaps he wanted to maintain the illusion that she had just been born smelling heavenly and that it was completely natural. Perhaps it was.

She pulled back, and suddenly there was a finger hovering menacingly between Ryan's eyes. "Pull crap like that again, and I'll kill you myself." She growled, in an attempt to sound fearsome. It didn't work.

Vanessa's face wasn't designed for scowling, it was soft and curving and made for smiling. She had full, perky cheeks that sat like cushions beneath her large doe-eyes, the color of a June sky. Her nose was petite, with a slight up-turn at the end that sat above a small pink mouth that split wide when she smiled. Her face was usually framed by slender lengths of hair that fell on either side of her cheeks, having escaped from the loose ponytail she often wore. Today however, her hair was down and brushed into a dazzling natural sheen that caught the sunlight that streamed through the window and outshone even the stark brightness of the hospital walls. Her hair fell onto her shoulders and down her back like water from a mountain brook and it rippled hypnotically when she laughed.

Eli waltzed around the room, opening the bathroom door, then the small closet, then dropped down to look under the bed.

"If they weren't outside, they're not going to be in here." Vanessa said.

"What's he looking for?" Ryan asked.

She rolled her eyes. "Candy stripers."

"They've got to be here somewhere." Eli replied as he pushed himself back onto his feet.

"Maybe someone called ahead and told them you were coming, so they all hid." Vanessa quipped.

He ignored her. "Have you seen them?" He asked, finally turning his attention to Ryan.

"You mean since I regained consciousness for the first time in two days?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Ugh!" Eli exclaimed. "Where are they?"

"Have you tried 1954?" Ryan asked.

Eli smiled. "Good to see the famous Fisher wit escaped unscathed."

"That's about the only thing." Ryan replied.

"Is there anything we can do-" Vanessa began, but a loud beep had interrupted her.

Eli was fiddling with the nurse call button, and a moment later a dark-haired nurse Ryan had never seen hurried into the room.

"What's the matter?" She asked.

"Yes, can you tell me where-" Eli started, but Vanessa cut him off.

"Nothing, sorry, he sat on the button. Total accident." She smiled sweetly.

The nurse pursed her lips and left.

"You want to get us thrown out of here? Just like you did at Roller World?" Vanessa hissed.

"Roller Wor-in fifth grade?! You're still mad about that? Besides, they can't throw Ryan out, he's hooked up to all these...tubes."

"They can still throw _us_ out, _we're_ not hooked to anything." Vanessa said.

"Good point." Eli replied. "Ryan, you don't need all these things, do you? V and I are going to hook ourselves up to a few. I've been jonesing for a fix of..." He scrutinized a label on one of the bags. "...dextran."

Vanessa turned back to Ryan. "You're really okay?"

"I'm really medicated."

"Same thing." Eli said.

Ryan looked Vanessa straight in the eye and held it, unblinking, so she knew he was serious. Then he gave a small nod. She replied with a smile.

"I will say this, Ironsides: I lament the condition of the modern American healthcare system. The candy stripers were clearly a lie, as was the cliché of sexy nurses. I mean don't get me wrong, at the sight of a pretty girl, we all know I dive behind furniture so they don't see me sobbing in fear and crippling self-doubt, but here there is absolutely no danger of that...and I'm a little disappointed."

"Please tell me that's _all_ you're going to say." Vanessa said.

"Oh, not even close. You know me better than that. Have you seen these women? Not one of them is younger than my mother. What good are blatantly sexist stereotypes if they're not even true?"

"There are stereotypes about your mother?" Ryan joked.

Eli didn't miss a beat. "Yes, that she is a wonderful, saintly human being about whom you keep your concussed, comatose, slightly lopsided mouth shut."

"I'm confused," Vanessa began, "the stereotype about your mother is that she is wonderful, but you're saying the stereotype is wrong? What does that mean?"

She caught Ryan's eye and they both grinned. They had Eli beat, and that didn't happen as often as they would've liked.

They could see the cogs turning at full tilt in Eli's brain as he tried to produce a comeback, but he got nowhere.

"It means I need pudding." He finished. "Anyone else?"

Vanessa gave a small, suppressed smile that only turned up one corner of her mouth but seemed to reach both of her bright blue eyes. It was the smile she used when Eli finished one of his little rants or when she was feeling mischievous, or when Ryan had just done something stupid, but somehow she managed to find it endearing. It was the smile she had used during the whole period when Ryan was obsessed with, but never spoke to, a girl in his history class. It was the smile she had used throughout Eli's infamous "Hawaiian shirt phase". The smile she used when Ryan or Eli were acting like idiots or nine year olds, or when she herself was about to act that way. Ninety-nine percent pleasantly annoyed, one percent mischievous encouragement. It was Ryan's favorite of her smiles.

She tucked her long, blonde hair behind one ear and plopped down on the edge of the bed. Ryan felt her body heat radiate to his leg that she was sitting a few inches from, he felt her soft hand slip into his, he smelled her captivating scent.

"I'd say we've waited long enough, wouldn't you?" Eli inquired of Vanessa.

"Definitely." She agreed.

"Enough for what?" Ryan asked.

"Enough with the pleasantries. We want the story: spare no gory or pants-crappingly terrifying details. Your mom said it was a bear, but I'm not ruling anything out just yet. You can tell me if it was a yeti, I'll believe you. Maybe it was a deadly game of cat and mouse with a serial killer. Maybe it was a _Deliverance_ type situation-" He paused, then grimaced. "If it was a _Deliverance_ thing, feel free to spare _some_ of the gory details."

Ryan's smile was genuine, but it also helped to mask the fear in his eyes. Eli was closer than he thought to the truth; the yeti, not _Deliverance_. Ryan knew that his friends would never guess what had really happened, no sane person would. Ryan also knew that he was going to tell his friends exactly what he had seen and what had happened, he had to, he couldn't bear it alone. However, today was not the day for that. He needed to explain it to them when he was fully recovered, when he could prove to them that he was thinking rationally, and when he had had a few days to put more of it together.

Instead, Ryan launched into the same story he had given Dr. Webster, adding the details that the good doctor had supplied.

"Sorry to disappoint, but it was definitely a bear." Ryan began, and recounted as much of that night as he had pieced together.

When he finished, Vanessa wore a look horror but, as was usually the case, Eli was first to speak.

"Ryan, I misjudged you. That is awesome. Like one of those surfers on Shark Week who loses a leg then punches the shark in the nose. We throw an orphan or maybe a cancer scare into the mix, I smell a Lifetime Original Movie."

"Well thanks. Because you know, at the time," Ryan said dryly, "that's exactly what was going through my head: 'What side do I want them to shoot me from for the Discovery Channel interview?"

"Left side, definitely." Eli responded. "Your hair on the right does kind of a...well, nevermind."

It wasn't until now that Ryan had realized the vice grip Vanessa had on his hand. She had been grasping it tighter and tighter as Ryan spoke and now that he was fully aware of it, it hurt.

He squeezed her hand back. "V, I'm really okay."

Vanessa blinked and he felt her grip loosen. "Oh, sorry. I mean, sorry about the hand, not sorry that you're okay."

Ryan smiled. "Yeah, I got that."

Another nurse came into the room and busied herself with Ryan's monitors and charts.

"We'll let you sleep." Eli said and Vanessa got up from Ryan's bed, squeezing his hand once more before letting go.

"Thanks for coming, guys. It was...it was great to see you. And thanks for the balloons." He gestured with his head to the bright bouquet that the three of them had all but forgotten.

Vanessa smiled. "When are they going to let you out of here?"

"Couple of days, I think. Then I'm stuck at home for a while after that." He replied. "Can you cover for me at school?"

"I wouldn't worry about that. If Ms. Bennett buys Eli's 'intermittent mono' excuse, she'll definitely accept a doctor's note certifying a bear attack. Everything else is mostly business as usual. We'll..." She cast a glance a Eli, " _I'll_ catch you up on any reading you miss." And her face shifted into the same, wonderful, half smile that gave just the slightest crinkle to her nose.

Ryan smiled. "Thanks for everything."

Eli gave a casual salute, Vanessa added a nod to her smile, and they were out the door.

### Chapter 4

The next few days were a disjointed blur. The hours when Ryan was asleep or on heavy medication seemed to pass like seconds, while the times when he was awake and conscious in the hospital bed, or later in his bed at home, seemed to drag on. The pain was slowly and steadily lessening, but it was a long, unpleasant road.

Vanessa and Eli came by regularly, which helped break the tedium of house arrest. The homework they brought for him also relieved the boredom, though by the time he was neck-deep in physics equations, Ryan began to long for a little tedium.

By the next Monday, two weeks since he had first woken up in the hospital, Ryan was well enough to go back to school. His joints were stiff and his injuries still harassed him with pounding aches, but he was more than willing to put up with it if it got him out of his bed and out of the house.

For the first time since Ryan could remember, the shrill beeping of the alarm on his phone was a welcome sound. For Ryan, waking up to a good old alarm was the first step in getting back to his old life.

He shrugged into some clothes that smelled clean enough, dumped his books into his bag, and slipped downstairs and out the door as quickly and quietly as he could. If his mother had the opportunity to stop him, to come up with some excuse to keep him home another week, she would take it. That was the last thing Ryan wanted.

As he eased the front door closed and stepped onto the porch, Ryan immediately regretted two things: that he hadn't grabbed anything to eat on his way out, and that he hadn't thought to bring a jacket.

Ryan had been indoors for too long and somewhere during that time, the weather had turned to full-blown autumn. The October air was biting and the stiff breeze whistled through his t-shirt. His body shook in an uncontrollable shiver and his teeth clacked against each other as he rushed the curb where his old Jeep Cherokee Sport was parked. He fumbled with the key then scrambled inside in an attempt to shut out the cold as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, his car was not much better. The enclosed space protected Ryan from wind chill, but every other kind of chill was inside the car to greet him. With trembling fingers he turned the ignition and the aging Jeep coughed once in the cold then sputtered to life. Ryan turned on the heater and was hit with a blast of cold air.

The car had seen better days; many, many better days. The exterior paint had once been a navy blue, but was now a faded blue with rust highlights. The upholstery was worn or missing altogether in some sections of the back seat, everything inside rattled, and the "Check Engine" light had been on since the late nineties. The heater took at least five minutes to live up to its name, and in the meantime it pumped in air from the outside, which on this morning made it much closer to an air conditioner.

Ryan made tight fists to try and warm his fingertips on the insides of his palms and it helped a little. He leaned over and flipped open the glove box. His numb fingers rummaged around for a moment, grazing users manuals and ketchup packets. He removed a cassette tape, the only thing his car stereo could play, and shut the compartment.

It was AC/DC's _Back In Black_ , a thrift store find he had made years ago, and Ryan saw to his delight that he had rewound the tape, a rare occurrence. He clicked the cassette into place, shifted into drive, and pulled onto the street as the music began to build. Today was going to be a good day. He could feel it.

Ryan arrived at school much earlier than he usually did. He made the rounds with most of his teachers and explained a little of what had happened. To his surprise, they were all very sympathetic. A few even let him off the hook for his assignments altogether.

He still had twenty minutes to spare before class, so Ryan walked up and down the brown, muted halls as they began to fill with students. He hadn't been to school in what felt like forever, and the near-death experience made things seem even more alien. Still, what comforted Ryan the most were the things he had never taken much notice of before: like the long lines of students in front of the vending machines who wouldn't be able to form complete sentences until well into their first Diet Coke. He strolled past the rows of students sitting in the hallways, their backs against the walls and their noses just inches from the assigned reading they were supposed to have finished over the weekend. The smell of fresh-brewed but still-terrible coffee wafted towards him from the teacher's lounge and, for perhaps the first time in history, a high school student sighed with contentment about being at high school.

Ryan made his way to the bathroom, one final stop before he headed off to first period. Things hadn't changed a bit: the oversized plastic trash can was tipped over and spilling yesterday's paper towels all over the floor. The second urinal from the left was overflowing into the others. Slayer still ruled on the mirror at the far end. It was as if Ryan had never left, and that was a nice thought.

As he looked at himself in the mirror however, his mood changed. Staring back at him was the reminder that he _had_ left. That he _had_ experienced something terrible that would be with him for the rest of his life. That he would never be _that_ Ryan, the old Ryan, ever again.

He lifted up his sleeve to examine the bite on his arm. All the doctors and nurses, even Dr. Webster, had been stumped. The wound had not even begun to heal. It looked as red and raw and fresh as the night he had received it, even though the doctors had stopped the bleeding and bandaged it over and over. It no longer hurt, but the puncture wounds were just as deep as if they had been inflicted an hour ago. He ran his hands over each of the marks in the curving row. It looked as if it should be painful to the touch, but it wasn't. All Ryan felt was a strange heat radiating from it, as though this particular section of arm was a few degrees hotter than the rest of his body.

Ryan pulled his sleeve down. He had stared at the arm countless times over the previous days. Nothing had changed: he still didn't know why it looked that way or, more importantly, what the thing was that had made it. He had laid in his bed for hours with his eyes fixed on the ceiling but his mind far away.

Ryan had been trying to piece it all back together, everything he could remember about the creature. In fact, Ryan was afraid he had _over_ thought it. He had tried so hard to remember that now he wasn't sure which of the details were truly accurate and which ones he had convinced himself of over the passing weeks.

He shook his head. Ryan knew he shouldn't be worrying about it right now. He needed to focus on school, on getting back to normalcy. None of these answerless riddles were going anywhere, just like the bite on his arm.

He turned on the squeaky tap and splashed some water on his face. Ryan grabbed a paper towel and knew he was fortunate there was one to grab. In the next hour or so, all the dispensers would be empty and all the toilets and drains would be stuffed with their contents.

As he dried his face, Ryan stared at himself in the mirror. Most of the scratches and bruises on his face were healed or scarred over, and the rest were fading quickly. His dark green eyes looked normal, with all traces of his black eye gone. His jaw held the majority of the scrapes that had yet to heal, but they were mostly beneath his chin, which made them much less visible. He turned on the water again, warm this time, and he ran his wet hands through his short, dark blonde hair. The water didn't do much of anything; Ryan's hair still stuck out at odd, perpetually mussed angles the way it always had.

He wiped the excess water on his jeans and sighed. His good mood had all but disappeared, replaced by a slightly nauseated feeling as his mind wandered to the truth he had been trying to avoid for the last two weeks: the creature was still out there. There was nothing to say that it wouldn't come back for him, or that it wouldn't attack someone else. Ryan also knew that if he really wanted to get to the bottom of things, sooner or later he was going to have to find the animal again, and that was a thought he did not relish.

***

The first few classes of the day were engaging and refreshing after his weeks of boredom and solitude, but the novelty of being back in school wore off quickly. By lunch he was in the same mood he'd been in every school day for the last eleven years: he wanted to leave.

As he entered the cafeteria, Ryan was confronted with the pleasant fact he had been facing all day: he was out among girls again. In the last few weeks, Ryan had been completely cut off from the rest of the world, and the only people he had seen were his family and friends. Now that he was back in school, he was constantly reminded of how truly nice it was to be around girls. He had missed them and he hadn't even realized it: their smell, their walk, their hair.

He plopped his tray down on their end of the table and took the seat next to Eli, across from Vanessa. It was their own little corner of the cafeteria.

Ryan's high school wasn't as cliquish or gossipy as those on TV; no one really cared about anybody's business outside their own circle of friends. There were bigger groups of friends and smaller groups of friends, but it wasn't the class warfare like popular culture insisted all high schools were mired in. The three friends had grown up together, and that's how they stayed. They weren't outsiders, they weren't insiders. They didn't exclude anyone, but they didn't go out of their way to include anyone either. They had each other, and that's how they liked it.

"Don't look now guys, but we go to school with girls." Ryan said.

"Wait, what?!" Eli answered.

"Isn't high school a little late to be just figuring this out?" Vanessa asked.

"Explains a lot, actually." Eli said.

"You guys don't know what it was like. There are a lot of girls here. I took that for granted before." Ryan replied.

"Does that mean you're actually going to talk to one of them?" Vanessa asked with a gentle smirk.

"Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Besides, don't you mean 'one of us'? Don't you fall into that category?" Ryan pointed out.

"Or is there something you've been hiding from us all these years?" Eli quipped to Vanessa. "You know, now that I'm really looking, is that an Adam's apple-"

He was cut short by a French fry which Vanessa flicked at him. Eli tried to catch it in his mouth but it hit him in the eye instead.

"Let's face it," Vanessa began, "to you guys I stopped being a girl the day I dunked on Eli."

"Yeah, when we were eleven!" Eli shot back. "The hoop was six feet high! The ball said 'Nerf' on it! Besides, at that age, all girls were taller than boys."

"Uh huh, and what's your excuse now?" Ryan cracked.

" _Then_ it was normal, now it's adorable. I am five foot five inches of burning love. I defy you to show me a woman who doesn't want this...on second thought, I don't defy you anything. Please show me a woman, any woman, I don't care what she wants. I'll wear lifts, I'll-"

"You know, you'd think nearly getting killed would give me perspective," Ryan cut in, knowing that Eli could go on for hours, "like that life is too short to be afraid of talking to girls."

"And did it?" Vanessa asked.

"Not in the least. I'd still take an angry bear over approaching a girl cold."

"My hero." Eli replied. "Have you considered using the angry bear story _in order_ to talk to girls? You fought off a bear, man. The Jeremiah Johnson thing could be very sexy."

"What? How? 'Hi, my name is Ryan. We've never spoken before, but I was recently mauled by a bear. What are you doing tomorrow night?'"

"See?" Eli insisted. "You're in!"

"Gave me chills." Vanessa agreed with a smile.

Eli began again. "Well, now that we've got that worked out, I feel the need for a second lunch." He pulled his car keys from his pocket. "Anyone else for the diner?"

"Class starts in ten minutes." Ryan replied.

"Ugh, I don't know why you're so attached to History. We know how it ends! 1492, pilgrims, Indians, British, yadda yadda yadda, Constitution. Come on, I want pancakes."

Eli ran his hand through his coffee-colored hair and held the keys up next to his face. His dark eyes, the same color as his hair, glinted as he grinned. Eli's eyes were always slightly crinkled, as if he were enjoying some private joke that the rest of the world would never hear. Unlike Ryan, Eli could afford to skip class. While Ryan had his strengths and weaknesses, Eli seemed to be good at everything. His mind was like a steel trap and though he had just brushed off the need for learning history, Ryan knew Eli could probably rattle off all the names, dates, and necessary facts of every major battle of the American Revolution. He was taking second-level Algebra for the third time, but could have breezed through AP Calc without breaking a sweat. Chemistry, physics, French, English, Eli could ace them all, but he didn't care enough to try. Ryan had brought this up with Eli once before, and only once. He had asked why Eli never applied himself, and his friend had responded simply: "Because I've got my priorities straight. Ooh! _Golden Girls_ marathon!" Ryan had never brought it up again.

"Suit your square selves." Eli said and he bounced away.

A moment later, the first bell rang and Ryan found himself caught up in the sea of people leaving for class as he waved goodbye to Vanessa. He weaved his way through the traffic of the halls to American History. He walked to the back of the class and slumped into a seat near the window. Ryan exhaled and set his hand beneath his chin as he stared outside.

The trees on either side of the parking lot stood with yellowing leaves fluttering fitfully in a sporadic breeze. The sun shone on the cars and pavement below, making the outside look much warmer than it was. His eyes drifted to the cloudless blue sky of early autumn and Ryan's gaze fell to the outline of a large bird circling lazily between him and the pale sun.

### Chapter 5

The next few weeks brought Ryan as close to normal life as he would ever be again. The days passed uneventfully, with no hint of the looming pothole in the road that Ryan kept feeling was just around the corner. He had fallen completely back into his old routine to the point that sometimes it felt as though the attack had never happened at all, as if it was all just a faint memory of a bad dream. Other times however, when shafts of bright moonlight broke through his curtains, when unseen noises whispered in the dark, or when he caught sight of the bite on his arm, the worst of the memories would come rushing back to him all at once.

The bite itself had finally begun to heal and scar, but the nightmares were still as fresh as ever. Every night Ryan was forced to relive the attack in the forest. In his dreams however, the threat of the woods became a hundred different places. He ran, pursued by the creature, through the halls of school, through his home, through the grocery store. When Ryan closed his eyes, the monster's hunting ground was as varied as his memories, but it was always, always there. Some nights Ryan got away by barricading himself in the teacher's lounge, pushing couches and tables up against the doors. Some nights he wasn't so lucky, and he was forced to watch himself, over and over, bleeding to death under the harsh phosphorescent lights in the frozen food aisle as the yellowed linoleum disappeared under an expanding pool of his own crimson blood.

Some things, smaller things, still hadn't gotten back to normal and Ryan knew they probably never would. His father did his best to hide it, but Ryan could tell Joseph still blamed himself for what had happened, despite Ryan's protests. People also continued to treat Ryan more gently than they had before, as though they were trying to prove that they could treat him normally, but in fact they were afraid that he might break down at any moment if they said or did the wrong thing.

Ryan's return to his old life, the family dinners, the movies, school, hanging out in Eli's basement, made it harder to keep a firm grasp on the abnormal events of that night. With each day that passed, Ryan was able to remember it less and less clearly.

As the details of the event began to slip away, Ryan was surprised to find the smaller details of the creature were also beginning to fade. In that moment when he had been on the pavement, the moment he thought would be his last, Ryan had been certain that every detail of the creature would remain etched in his brain forever. Now however, he was having trouble creating a clear picture of the animal in his head. He could remember some things vividly, the head and eyes always, but the more time that passed, the less he was able to recall. Sometimes, in the bright of day, when things like monsters seemed impossible, Ryan allowed himself to think, if only for a moment, that perhaps it truly had just been a bear. Perhaps the stress of the attack had caused him to see things that weren't there. Perhaps he had lost so much blood that he had started to hallucinate.

Even when he accepted what he had seen and put his mind to it, Ryan still couldn't work everything through. He reasoned that an animal like the one he had seen couldn't have survived all these years in a national forest without being seen by anyone else, especially since it clearly wasn't afraid of humans. There was no kind of natural evolution or mutation that would have resulted in what Ryan saw. Nothing on earth could move that quickly or that silently. There were too many contradicting facts, too many arguments on both sides, and Ryan couldn't tease any of it apart. What he could do was eliminate some of the possibilities, which was why he was now sitting in the waiting room of a Dr. Rebecca Bly, clinical psychologist.

Dr. Webster had initially suggested that psychological treatment might not be a bad thing, considering Ryan's ordeal, and of course Ryan's mother had pounced upon the idea. Ryan wasn't worried about the aftereffects of his "traumatic experience," and he doubted a shrink could touchy-feely his nightmares away, but he was trying to solve a mystery of sorts, and he figured no one would know more about hallucinations than a psychologist. So, Ryan had agreed almost immediately to see Dr. Bly, much to the relief of his mother.

The waiting room was small, with no more than half a dozen chairs, but cozy. All around him, Ryan could see that the room had been decorated to seem as friendly and inviting as possible. Everything was in varying shades of cream, with dark, expensive-looking wood furniture and fresh flowers in stylish, modern vases.

Ryan approached the desk, where the bottle-blonde twenty-something looked up from her computer.

"Hi, are you Ryan?" she asked politely, her white smile oozing with false sincerity.

"Yeah." He replied.

"Great. Have a seat and Doctor Bly will be right with you."

"Thanks."

He walked over and sat down in one in the corner of the empty waiting room, next to the table piled with magazines.

Ryan was only on number forty-four of the Fifty Sexiest People of the Year when he heard the door behind the desk open.

"Ryan?"

He hastily put down the magazine and stood up.

"Come on in." Dr. Bly said.

The doctor was much younger than Ryan had expected. She couldn't have been older than thirty, which couldn't have been more than a few years older than the receptionist.

She wore a slim black skirt and white blouse, her brown hair pulled back, partially hidden by black-rimmed reading glasses. She was skinny, with a build Ryan figured of a long-distance runner. Her face was sharp and angular with a long, straight nose and a pointed chin. Despite this, her eyes were so gentle that the sharpness of her other features seemed less harsh and gave her a more approachable air than she might have had otherwise.

He walked into her office and she shut the door behind him. It was decorated much the same as the waiting room, but in richer tones. An oversized desk, backed by high bookshelves stood against one wall, and a large couch atop a thick rug sat in the middle of the room.

"I'm Becky." She said in a practiced voice. She shook Ryan's hand and motioned for him to sit on the couch. "Please."

She took the plush, important-looking chair opposite him and leaned back, crossing her legs and resting a legal pad on them. She studied Ryan for a moment.

Suddenly self-conscious, Ryan tried to appear as relaxed and laid-back as possible, though he didn't know how well he was doing.

After a moment, Becky spoke. "I've talked to Doctor Webster and he filled me in on what happened. As I understand it, he merely suggested therapy to possibly get a jump on dealing with some trauma issues, but your mother was insistent. Why do you think that is?"

Ryan was surprised that apparently the head shrinking was to begin immediately. He didn't like the thought of talking about his problems to a complete stranger. Showing that kind of weakness to a person he'd never met was a terrifying thought. He wasn't here to talk through his issues, he was here to try and fit a few pieces of the puzzle together then get out. She was blunt and Ryan liked that, but it was going to make it harder to sidestep her "feeling" questions and get to the questions of his own.

"Look, I uh, I appreciate you seeing me, but I'm not really here to talk about my mother...or my feelings...or really anything."

She smiled. "That's fine. The mother thing is probably a little Freudian for me anyway."

"I thought Freud was your guys' patron saint..."

Becky chuckled. "He did a lot for the science, and he's a nice figurehead for the profession I suppose, but most of his theories are pretty outdated. Personally I only subscribe to a few of his more basic ideas."

"Like what?" Ryan asked. He figured that the longer he kept her talking, the less he would have to talk.

"The conscious, the subconscious, things like that. For example, Freud believed that within each of us are these opposing forces: the animal parts of our brain in a constant struggle for dominance with the rational parts."

"I guess I could see that." Ryan replied.

Dr. Bly nodded. "It's an idea that spans disciplines as well as cultures. Psychology, philosophy, theology. Many people believe that there are these two halves of humanity: our savage, animal side and our rational, moral, human side. Some religions teach that the animal side is a source of base temptation and must be overcome by the human side, through faith or worship. Some philosophers and evolutionary theorists believe that morality itself is a purely human construct, and that we only refrain from murder and theft because society would punish us for them."

"What do you believe?" Ryan asked.

"I believe we all have a little animal in us, some more than others. I believe that the human mind has certain tendencies that are difficult to overcome, certain...natures."

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

"Is that what you do here?" Ryan asked. "Help people cope with their basic 'natures'?"

"Sometimes." She said with another smile. "But you're not here for a lecture from Philosophy 101, and obviously you're not here to answer my insightful, probing questions about the incident, so why don't you tell me why you _are_ here."

"I'm...curious. I had questions that I thought maybe you could answer."

"Well I'll do my best. That's what I'm here for."

"I..." Ryan started, but hesitated. He took a breath and started again. "Hallucinations. What can cause them? Medically, I mean."

Becky's eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at him over the tops of her reading glasses. "I'm not a medical doctor, Ryan, so I'm not sure I could say, from a medical standpoint."

"Could loss of blood, I mean, severe loss of blood, could that cause someone to hallucinate?" He stumbled through, immediately regretting even bringing it up. He knew he wasn't getting out of here scot free anymore, not after bringing up hallucinations in a shrink's office.

"Again, all I can give you is my best guess. Blood loss can send you into hypovolemic shock, which can alter your mental state. Still, I don't think it can cause hallucinations. You're talking about visual hallucinations?"

"Yeah..." Ryan replied.

She clicked her pen. "These hallucinations, did you experience them after you woke up in the hospital or that night in the woods?"

"I...I'm not even sure I saw anything." He replied.

"Ryan, what do you think you saw?" She asked, her tone more clinical now than conversational.

"I don't know what I saw. I don't even know if I saw anything. I mean, if loss of blood can't cause hallucinations, then there we go, we know I didn't see anything."

"Well you obviously think you saw something or else you wouldn't have asked." She said, making her voice as soothing as possible. "And there are dozens of different things that can cause visual hallucinations. It could have been caused by something other than blood loss."

"Forget I said anything. Thanks for your help-"

"Ryan," Becky's tone was forceful, but still kind. "You can relax. I'm not going to tell your mother or Doctor Webster or anyone else. This is all confidential. And I'm not going to call the men in the white coats with the big van. You don't strike me as a whack job...and yes, that's a professional term." She said with a smile. "You went through something no one should ever have to endure, especially not at your age. You don't have to tell me what you saw or what you think you saw, that's fine. All I want to do is help you, and to do that, you've got to at least give me something. Now if you feel comfortable, tell me this: these hallucinations, are we talking Papa Smurf riding a zebra and robbing a liquor store or just a tree trunk that looked like it might have had a face in it?"

Ryan was nervous and he felt as though he had told too much of the truth already, but he managed a smile. "Tree trunk. Just some weird, little things that didn't look quite right."

Dr. Bly smiled back. "Then I don't think you have anything to worry about. People often see things in the dark that aren't there in the light. With the amount of stress you were under, the fear I'm sure you were in, your brain probably wasn't processing everything perfectly."

Ryan didn't say anything for a while as Becky's eyes remained fixed on him.

"One more question?" He asked.

"Of course."

"Do they really still wear white coats? Isn't that a little cliché? It seems like if you're going to be subduing crazy people, the last thing you want to do is give yourself away with such an obvious outfit..."

Becky grinned. "Some wear white, most just wear hospital scrubs."

"But you don't think I'll be finding out firsthand?"

"Not anytime soon, no." She smiled again.

### Chapter 6

Stale pizza. Mildew. Laundry detergent. Of all the smells in the known universe, these three together were Ryan's favorite. Separately, none of them were especially remarkable. Together however, in Ryan's nostrils, they formed an elegant bouquet which could be truly appreciated only by a select few. Ryan happened to be one of these few, since this combination of aromas meant that he was in his favorite place on Earth: Eli's basement. That one fact was all he needed to know to be happy, and at any given moment, there was no place he'd rather be.

The basement had been like a second home to Ryan ever since he'd first met Eli all those years ago. The high and low points of their childhoods had occurred right here. Shared elation over clearing the final level of _Super Mario World_ on Eli's old SNES _._ Shared tears the night Eli's father had died. Shared sniggering by Vanessa and Eli when Ryan had gone there for moral support before his first date. Shared commiseration after the date failed to lead to a second. Ryan didn't often think about such things, but on the occasions he did wax meditative, he knew that when he was sixty and thinking back on the "golden years," the memories would all be of this place.

Ryan loved everything about the basement. He loved the mismatched rectangles of scavenged carpeting that only covered a quarter of the unfinished concrete floor. He loved the ancient washer and drier that sat in the corner, the same one Eli's mother had used since they were kids. It made the same noises now as it had the night of Ryan and Eli's very first sleepover. Ryan loved the decades-old TV whose picture would get fuzzy if you stood in certain places relative to the rabbit years. He loved the rumbling refrigerator that stood against the wall and he loved that, even now, Eli's mother always made sure it was stocked with more soda than the three of them could possibly ever drink. He loved the ratty, fourth-hand sofa that sat in the middle of the room, and the motley assortment of chairs that sat around it. There was the old dining chair Eli had kept when his mother had thrown out the rest of the dinette set. There was the old bean bag chair that sprayed its "beans", the small white foam spheres, all around the room if you sat down too hard. There was the garish orange recliner that no one in the family was quite sure where it had originally come from. There was the desk chair that Ryan and Eli had stolen from a particularly disliked junior high math teacher. More than any other place Ryan knew, this was home.

On this particular occasion of course, his friends were in a shouting match.

"You're being ridiculous!" Eli insisted. "Two arms versus eight legs? I don't care how proportionally strong they are, in a combat situation it's going to come down to quantity and flexibility over strength."

Vanessa disagreed. "Uh huh. And tell me this: how are these government-engineered octopuses...octopi? How are they going to get into this 'combat situation'? Chimpanzees are mammals. They walk on land. They are just plain better suited to government black ops!"

Eli squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "How many times do I have to say it? They could be government engineered to walk on land and breathe above water! It's not that difficult a concept! These hypothetical chimpanzees of yours can wield at most two, maybe three weapons. Octopuses on the other hand? They could use two legs to walk and the other _six_ to carry weapons! Six! Against two! It's simple math!"

Vanessa opened her mouth but Ryan chimed in first. "You know that band we were always going to start but didn't because none of us had any talent? If we ever start it, we're calling ourselves The Hypothetical Chimpanzees."

"Stay out of this, Ryan!" Vanessa thundered, her face a bizarre contortion of smile and good-natured rage.

And so the argument went on, as they often did in Eli's basement. On most nights, Ryan was right there with them in the verbal fray, but tonight he wasn't feeling particularly combative. Ryan knew it was probably just as well, since getting into such a controversial topic as government-engineered attack animals would have kept him there for hours, and he didn't have the time tonight.

"I've got to get going. Let me know who wins." Ryan said eventually, and he rose from the orange recliner.

He headed for the door and heard Vanessa tell Eli that this wasn't over and that she'd be right back. By the time Ryan reached the top of the basement stairs, Vanessa had fallen in step beside him.

He waited for her to say something, but she didn't, so he kept walking. They passed through the kitchen, then the front door, and it wasn't until they reached the end of the driveway that she finally spoke. The street was bathed in a darkening orange as the afternoon sun made its way steadily west.

"You never told me what the shrink said."

Ryan turned to face her. "She said it was the big house for me. Do not pass 'Go', do not collect $200."

Vanessa did not smile. "You can wisecrack your way into making everybody else think you're a hundred percent: your parents or Eli or, apparently, even a trained professional, but not me. Those sarcastic and indifferent charms of yours don't work on me."

"Well it sounds like I'm really up the creek then, eh?" Ryan said and he smiled. Vanessa still did not.

"You tell me." She said softly.

She was right. Somehow Vanessa had always been able to see things in him that others couldn't. His parents, even Eli, couldn't compare. She could cut through it all. He dropped the pretense.

"What...what are you asking?" Ryan stammered.

Vanessa had been looking at him the whole time, but now something had changed. It felt more like she was looking _into_ him.

It was as if the birds had stopped chirping in the trees and the whistle of the crickets had died away. The mood had changed in an instant. No more playful arguing. No more good-natured insults or weak Monopoly references. Vanessa had changed the game and she had done it so fast Ryan's head was spinning. Her gaze, gently exploding from blue eyes that seemed to shoot into Ryan's soul and shatter his defenses like a slow-motion bullet through glass. All of a sudden, this was a big deal. Without warning, tonight, here, this crack in the sidewalk next to the tree planted on the parking strip, had become significant. Important. Mature.

"You're not the guy that left on that camping trip. You look like him, you sound like him, you smell like him, but that guy never came back. You, whoever you are, you've replaced him. And I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying that you're a different person, and that is not something that you should just shrug off."

Her voice had never wavered, her gaze never faltered. In that instant, Ryan hated her for it. He hated that she had seen right through him, he hated that she wanted to help, he hated that she was lecturing him on how to deal with his own problems, like he was a child.

"What am I supposed to say to that?" Ryan demanded. "Of course it was a traumatic experience, I was scared to death. I'm still scared! Do you know what I count as a 'good night' nowadays? One where I don't wake up at four in the morning screaming and drenched in sweat. I don't know why it happened to me and I don't know why I lived. I don't know if I'll ever get over it, and I don't know how I'll even be able to tell that I am over it. Maybe I'll have these god-forsaken nightmares until I'm forty, maybe I won't. I don't know! That's my point! If I don't know this stuff, you don't know this stuff, so talking about it isn't going to do a bit of good. My problems aren't going to be solved by therapy, and they're not going to be solved with a hug, a pint of Fudge Ripple, and a good cry. I tough this out and I crack wise, because that's the only way I know how to deal with things."

He finished red-faced, and immediately felt like he had gone too far. Vanessa had kept her voice even and controlled when she spoke, but he had thundered away at her without mercy. Still, she hadn't flinched. She hadn't once broken her gaze, which had now turned to steel as she grit her teeth. Her voice was soft, but her words held the same icy chill as the evening air.

"You don't want my help, that's fine, but this is not a problem that's going to just go away. You don't get to go back to being that kid playing Xbox with Eli anymore. You stared down death, and lucky for you, you lived, but now you've got to deal with effects of that."

"And what makes you the expert on all this, huh?" Ryan asked angrily, trying to use righteous indignation to keep the high ground that was rapidly crumbling beneath him.

"Nothing." She said simply. "I don't know what it feels like and I can't, I guess...relate...to what you're going through, but I know _you_. I know you think you can just walk away from this and it'll all sort itself out, but I think this is too big for you to handle on your own. I was just offering to help."

He had no retort. All she was doing was being concerned, and if that made Ryan as mad as he was now, he knew the problem was his, not hers. Still, he was stubborn. He didn't want her help. She only knew half the story, and that half was terrible enough. If Vanessa couldn't help him work through the effects of a bear attack, and he was still sure she couldn't, Ryan knew she definitely wouldn't be able to help him cope with a wolf-monster attack.

Ryan had to respond, but he knew he had to do so carefully. If he showed any weakness, any indication that Vanessa had gotten to him, it was over. If Ryan admitted to anyone, even himself, that he couldn't do this on his own, he would cease to be Ryan. He had always believed that showing weakness was for the touchy-feely types, the ones who couldn't deal, the ones on Lit Mag, the ones who listened to Coldplay. Showing emotion was for people who weren't strong enough to laugh it all off, and showing emotion was showing weakness. Ryan had learned that the moment you show weakness was the moment they pounce on you. You show weakness, the slightest chink in the armor, and they're all over you: Ryan the nerd, Ryan the geek, Ryan that couldn't hit the ball even when it was on the tee, Ryan that spent his recesses on the swings rather than playing soccer like the other boys, Ryan that didn't wear the latest fashions or drive the nicest car. He had made it this far on his own, by keeping it all bottled up inside, and he was going to get through this the exact same way.

Ryan knew he had to be mean. He wanted Vanessa to stop trying to help him and leave him alone. She didn't deserve it of course, but Ryan knew he had to be harsh to get the message across.

"Did I come to you on my knees, begging you to interfere with my life? No! What does that tell you? If I wanted your help, if I wanted anyone's help, I would ask for it!" He finished savagely as he turned and started the few remaining steps to his car.

"No you wouldn't!" And her voice finally wavered. It had cracked on the last syllable, somewhere between white-hot anger and a sob.

It had worked. Her glassy façade had cracked and Ryan had won. It wasn't a victory he would savor.

No more words were spoken as Ryan got into the Cherokee and pulled away. If he had mustered the strength to look back, to look her in the eye before he got in the car, he would have seen her blue eyes contorted, red and puffy, balanced precariously on the verge of the tears she was fighting with all the strength she had. If Ryan had turned and looked back as he rounded the corner at the end of the street, he would have seen Vanessa strike out in anger and frustration and slam her hand against the tree so hard that she would have a bruise on one side of her palm for days afterward.

***

Ryan only lived one neighborhood over from Eli, but today he took the long way. He needed time and space to think before he went home and had to put on the false smile all through family dinner. His mind tried to replay the scene over in his head but it was the last thing he wanted to think about. It wasn't the first time he and Vanessa had gone ten rounds in an argument like this, either that Ryan was too stoic or she was too emotional, but this was by far the worst. He was ashamed of the things he had said, but he didn't regret them. He knew she couldn't help him. Not this time.

Sunset was still a few minutes away, but the clouds that had gathered at the western horizon brought an early twilight that doused the earth in battling hues of bright orange and pale navy. The route Ryan had chosen led him through the outskirts of a third neighborhood, one with slightly older homes and lower income families. The houses here were smaller than those in the surrounding neighborhoods. The cars in the driveways and carports were older. The lawns were less manicured, some even overgrown. The patio furniture was faded, peeling, or rusted. The novelty mailboxes were more frequent.

As the Jeep snaked its way through the streets, Ryan tried to keep his attention on the things around him, on anything to keep his mind occupied. He had almost reached the edge of the neighborhood when something caught his eye. The house was a small split-level, red brick, set in a yard with more weeds than grass. It was encased by an old chain-link fence which kept corralled the large dog lounging on the crumbling front porch. Parked at the curb on the other side of the street was an old red pick-up truck, and it was this that had caught Ryan's attention. Inside the cab were a man and a woman who seemed to be in a heated argument.

Ryan eased off the gas pedal as he approached and the Cherokee slowed to a crawl. He saw the man reach over, and the woman promptly shoved his hand away. The man yelled at her, the woman yelled back, and the passenger door flew open as she stomped out and made her way across the street to the red brick house.

The woman was younger than Ryan had first thought. She didn't look too many years out of high school, but the bags under her eyes and the lines already creasing her face made her look older. She wore cheap high heels and a skirt that didn't match her jacket or the t-shirt underneath. She clutched an oversized handbag with hands that ended in long, false fingernails. Her hair bore signs of meticulous styling and heavy product, but it looked like it had been mussed during the argument in the car. Her eye make-up was running as a result of the tears, and it had left dark streaks down her face.

The man clambered out of truck on the driver's side and he stumbled. He left the door open as he walked around the truck and began to yell after the woman in thick, slurred speech. He had a mane of curly black hair that stuck to his perspiring face. He wore stained blue jeans over large brown work boots and an old t-shirt that fit him too snugly. As the man started across the street towards the house, the dog raised its head to watch.

Ryan's car was completely stopped now and it idled conspicuously in the middle of the road. Part of him, a big part, told him to keep driving and mind his own business. Another part of him however, told him that the situation might escalate, and quickly. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Ryan's thumb was at the ready, poised over the keys to call 911 as soon as he saw trouble.

The woman walked as quickly as she could in her heels, but she had barely reached the curb in front of the house before the man caught up to her. He grabbed her by the elbow and spun her around. She tried to shove him away, then pry his fingers off her, but he was far bigger and he held her tightly as he screamed into her face. She had enough range of motion in one arm to slap the man across the face, and she did. The retaliation made the man furious. He shook her once, hard, then threw her to the ground, as he continued to scream.

Ryan dropped his phone into the passenger seat and in one fluid motion, put the Jeep in park and killed the ignition. He could see now that there was no time for police. Something was going to happen here and it was going to happen now. He didn't think about the man's enormous size. He didn't think about his own newly-healed injuries. He didn't think about what he was going to do or say when he got out of the car. In fact there was only one thing running through Ryan's head as he stepped out onto the street: he could do something, or he could do nothing. There was no third option. Either the woman got hurt or she didn't, and Ryan knew he was the only variable in the equation.

Ryan's heart pounded in his chest as he took his first shaky steps toward the man. Adrenaline raged through his veins and his view became tunneled, focused entirely on the man not fifteen feet away. Ryan's hands shook and he felt blood pounding through his ears. His breath was raspy and labored.

Neither the man nor the woman had noticed Ryan yet and by now the man had grabbed a fistful of the woman's hair and was yelling once again. Ryan was easily close enough to understand the man's words, but his brain wasn't comprehending them. All Ryan heard were sounds: random syllables from the screaming man, pitiful sobs from the woman, the dog barking furiously at the commotion, and the blood rushing through his own ears.

Ryan was ten feet away now and the man brought his other hand down across the woman's face. It connected with a sickening clap of flesh against flesh and the woman's whimpers became cries of pain. Ryan broke into a run. Not a jog, but a dead sprint.

The fear was gone. There was no more hesitation, no more shaking. A wave of calm washed through Ryan's body and he felt his higher cognitive functions shut down. He wasn't thinking anymore, he was doing. He was a product of pure adrenaline. He was running at the man full-tilt with one, singular objective that seeped through his body like molten lava: to cause this man pain.

Ryan was still two steps away when the man turned and realized what was happening. Ryan saw his eyes widen in shock, then realization. The teenager leapt off the ground at full speed and a stillness seemed to hang in the air as he lunged. The man had stopped screaming. The woman had started to scramble away. The dog, seeing Ryan, had suddenly stopped barking.

As he made impact, Ryan's senses seemed to kick into overdrive. He felt the sweat on the man's torso as they collided, smelled the sickly sweet stench of alcohol on the man's breath, and he felt his own shoulder dislocate with the force of the impact.

The two sprawled to the ground. The man grunted in pain and Ryan gave a low, guttural scream of rage. He was notified of the pain searing through his shoulder as he hit the pavement, but he didn't feel it. It was as if his shoulder had sent a polite memo to his brain, alerting it of the damage, and the brain had simply filed it away to be dealt with later.

The force of the impact sent them rolling over one another and blurred glimpses of houses, trees, and cracked asphalt swirled through Ryan's field of vision. They came to an abrupt stop but the scuffle had already begun, as each man clawed and kicked. The older man forced him to the ground and Ryan felt, and heard, his shoulder crack back into place.

Ryan was outgunned. The man was stronger and far bigger than he was, and the surprise attack had done more damage to Ryan than it had to his opponent. The man pinned Ryan to the asphalt with a large, hairy hand around Ryan's neck. He made a fist and struck Ryan near the eye and his vision swam as his ears rang. The man struck him again and again: the ear, the eye, the jaw. Ryan felt his lip forced against his teeth and cut itself against them. He felt his nose forced into awkward shapes and angles and then he tasted the blood pouring out of it.

Ryan tried to kick his legs but he had no leverage against the man, and his physical strength was draining as he struggled. His fists flew against the man at every angle, but they didn't seem to be having any effect. He couldn't reach his opponent's face and his blows against the torso were too short and too weak. His fingers and hands ached from the ineffective impacts. Ryan watched as the outside of his vision began to gray and darken. The man's hand was still firmly around Ryan's throat and Ryan couldn't remember the last time he had taken a breath. He kicked and bucked harder now out of a flailing desperation not to win, but to live. One desperate kick caught the man in the ribs and he instinctively removed his hand to clutch his side.

It was the only opening Ryan was likely to get, but it was the only one he needed. Without thinking, he brought his hand crashing up into the man's face. The force behind his blow wasn't much, Ryan was on the verge of exhaustion and unconsciousness, but his hand made contact with the man's soft, vulnerable nose and he felt it break.

The man reared back and howled in pain as blood sprayed everywhere. Ryan felt the warm droplets cascade onto his face and shirt as the man rolled off him, holding his nose in both hands. Ryan coughed and sputtered and wanted nothing more than to lay there and black out, but he knew the man might continue his attack at any time. They both laid there for a moment, not two feet from each other as they coughed and moaned and writhed on the pavement. The woman was nowhere to be seen.

Ryan recovered first and stumbled, doubled over, back to the Cherokee. It seemed to take forever, with every step a battle of both body and will. Somehow he made it and managed to pull himself into the seat. As bloody fingers fumbled to turn the key, Ryan watched through the windshield as the man pushed himself onto his knees, then to his feet. He heard a muted roar of rage and pain and saw the man begin to drag and limp his way toward Ryan's car.

Ryan grappled with the ignition, the strength in his fingers all but gone. The man shuffled ever closer, but Ryan couldn't apply enough force to the key. After a few more frantic seconds, he grasped the key with bloody fingers and wrenched it, and the engine of the old Jeep coughed and turned over. His left eye had swollen almost shut, but through a bleary right, he was able to see well enough to slam the car into reverse and weave unsteadily away from the man. Ryan spun into a residential intersection and slammed the car into "drive" without stopping. He picked a direction at random and sped away.

Ryan didn't have the first clue how he made it home. He drove aimlessly for what seemed like hours, when all of a sudden he looked up and saw his own driveway. His first thought had been to put as much distance between himself and the man as possible, no matter the direction. Muscle memory, Ryan supposed, had taken over, but as he half-climbed, half-fell out of the car and trudged up his front lawn, Ryan couldn't believe he had any muscles left.

He had missed dinner, and never in his life had Ryan been so thankful for that. The family was gone. The note they had left him on the kitchen table told him where, but he didn't bother to read it.

He stumbled down the stairs to his bedroom and collapsed into his unmade bed. Ryan had lost consciousness before his head hit the pillow.

### Chapter 7

He had no concept of time or place in the first few moments after he awoke. Ryan peeled open his good eye and saw he was in his room. He had fallen into bed with the sun still hovering over the horizon, but as Ryan gingerly lifted his throbbing head, he could see through half-closed blinds that night had only just fallen. The sun was gone but the last traces of its glow still hung like curtains, low in the westerly sky. He felt like he had been asleep for hours, but he knew it couldn't have been more than a few minutes.

Ryan wasn't sure why he had woken up so quickly, but he guessed it had something to do with the pain. It didn't feel like any of his ribs had broken again, and all the bones in his face still felt intact, but that was the good news. His left eye was swollen completely shut and his lower lip felt rubbery and three sizes too big. His jaw ached with even the tiniest movement and the headache was almost unbearable. Pain enveloped him like a blanket from head to waist.

Ryan grasped his t-shirt to pull it over his head and he gasped with pain as his shoulder gave searing protest. He pulled off the shirt that was still sticky from the blood, both his and the man's, and he examined his torso. His chest and stomach were polka-dotted with the beginnings of bruises, his arms and elbows were scraped and scratched with small pieces of asphalt still embedded in the skin, and his knuckles were red and raw beneath a thick coating of brown crusted blood.

He eased himself to his feet with as little movement of his head as possible. Ryan's legs were shaky at first, but they seemed to be the only part of him that wasn't damaged. He trudged across the hall and into the bathroom where he peeled off his remaining clothes and took a shower.

Ryan sat down and rested his head against the tile. He let the water pour over him and he watched as unpleasant hues of red and brown washed off him and slid against the stark white of the bathtub. Ryan watched for a long time, his entire body still, until the water coming off his body was finally the same color as when it had started.

His mind sifted through what had happened. Despite his injuries, Ryan was glad he had intervened, but angry he had failed so miserably against the man. He was glad that the woman had gotten away, but angry when he considered that the man had probably ended up at the red brick house anyway, and Ryan was certain that's where the woman had gone. A shudder ran through him and he worried that his actions might have made things worse, that he had made the man even angrier and the woman would still be in danger. The only solace Ryan could find was in the hope that the broken nose had taken the fight out of the man. Even if Ryan were angry and drunk, he didn't have the physical strength left to hit anyone. He only hoped the man was in a similar state, or that the woman had the sense to get out while she could. He knew he probably should have tried to speak to the man before tackling him, but Ryan had a feeling it would have come to blows either way.

The water had been slowly losing its warmth, but Ryan couldn't muster the strength to reach up and turn it off. He took a deep breath and clambered to his feet. He shut off the water and stood for a while, dripping dry.

He walked back into his bedroom, dabbing at himself with a towel as he tried to avoid contact with the patchwork of bruises and scrapes.

His bed looked terrible, and it reminded Ryan of something out of a war movie. He had fallen unconscious face-down, and the large splotch of blood on the front of his shirt had transferred to his sheets. The pillow, too, had been soaking up the blood from Ryan's face. He wasn't sure how he was going to get the stains out, if he even could, but at the moment Ryan didn't care. He took the time to cover most of the bed with his comforter, flipped the pillow so the bloody side was down, and buried his bloody shirt at the bottom of a pile of other dirty clothes. It was as much effort as he was going to put into it tonight. Ryan didn't know how he was going to explain this fresh batch of injuries, but maybe if his parents got home late enough he could avoid them until the following afternoon. Hopefully by then he'd have come up with some kind of story.

He pulled on a pair of jeans and crossed the small room to flip on the desk lamp. Night had fallen completely now, and Ryan reached over his desk and slid open the window. The October air was chilly, but it felt good on his face and chest, like a giant ice pack. He closed his eyes and stood there, enjoying the air as he supported his weakened frame with one hand on the sill and one on the desk in front of him. It was quiet, peaceful. Ryan felt like he could stand there forever. Then his knees buckled.

He hadn't braced himself to support his full weight, so he pitched forward and slammed his upper half onto the top of the desk and knocked the lamp to the floor. He slid off the desk and fell backwards onto the carpet.

He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, then hesitated. Ryan didn't know what was going on, but he knew that if another one of his limbs was going to suddenly fail him, he wanted to be closer to the ground when it happened. He remained there for a moment, tensed, then slowly, deliberately, pushed himself back onto his feet.

Ryan was almost back to standing upright when the second wave came, much different from the first. His insides, his stomach, felt as though he was being kicked from all sides. He felt his organs press and contort, shifting and moving completely on their own. It was as if he had swallowed a dozen snakes and they were all trying to escape at once. It was nausea like he had never experienced, but his organs were shifting so much that the bile couldn't reach his throat. Ryan bent double and clutched his body as his fingers raked his sides. His face was contorted into a terrible grimace and he grunted with the exertion, but somewhere in the back of his mind Ryan realized that what was happening wasn't strictly painful, just unbearably unpleasant.

As quickly as it had come, the violent jostling inside of him subsided. It was still happening, Ryan could still feel it and he still clung to himself, but it had lessened. He felt the movement slow, then stop entirely, and he let out a long gasp.

It was then that Ryan experienced the most excruciating pain he had ever known. What had happened to him in the woods, what had happened to him in the street, they were nothing compared to this. Ryan fell onto the floor with a thud as his body was wracked with a level of agony that he didn't think was possible. Ryan knew it without a doubt: this was going to kill him.

He felt his limbs begin to lengthen. The bones and skin of Ryan's arm stretched out to impossible lengths, but the skin didn't stretch quite as quickly, which created the sensation that his arms were being pulled apart from the inside. His legs followed suit and the unimaginable pain doubled. Ryan screamed in agony.

Suddenly, a coarse, gray fur sprouted all over his body. Ryan raised his hands to his face and watched as his fingers elongated and then curved into wicked claws. His shoulders and chest grew impossibly broad, and then Ryan felt the muscles in his legs and arms swell and thicken. He looked down and saw the lower half of his pant legs expand, then rip apart as they hung in shreds off the top half of his jeans. He watched as his feet grew and grew and never seemed to stop growing as they formed themselves into gigantic, padded paws.

Ryan started screaming again and the sound reverberated off the walls and bounced back to him from all angles. He felt the changes in his body slow, but the pain seemed as excruciating as ever. At the same time, he felt the skin of his face and head being pulled and tugged. His ears moved, working their way farther up his head and he felt as the bones in his face elongated into a muzzle. This was the worst pain of all and Ryan instinctively filled his gigantic lungs and let loose another hellish scream. He felt his teeth shift, grow, and sharpen. As they did, Ryan heard his own scream change. His tortured, guttural cry became a low, savage roar that was unlike anything Ryan had ever before heard, much less produced.

As his body finished its transformation, the roar subsided into a labored gasp. Until now the only thing that had kept him conscious was the pain, but that had passed. For the second time that night, Ryan blacked out.

***

He came to later, though how much later he had no idea, and he found himself in a world of unfamiliar smells. Most of them he didn't recognize, they didn't mean anything to him, so he paid them no attention. There was one scent in the air however that he did recognize. It seemed to overpower the rest, cut through them, straight to his flaring nostrils. It was a smell he would recognize anywhere: blood. He pushed himself up and off the ground and followed the invisible trail of molecules in the air. He padded around on the soft ground without making a single sound. Underneath a pile of other smells, he found it: a ruffled, nearly weightless object spattered in blood. He stuck his nose in deeper and grazed the object with his snout. He inhaled deeply, taking note of all the nuances of this particular blood. He felt, almost tasted, as it flowed through his nostrils and down into his lungs. He savored it. Another deep lungful and the aroma of this blood was imprinted on his brain. He would know it again anywhere for as long as he, or the owner of the blood, lived.

He surveyed the area around him, hoping that the source of the blood was still nearby. It wasn't. In fact there was nothing else nearby; nothing that lived, nothing with blood in its veins. He felt a light breeze and it brought with it a hundred new smells. He felt it dance across his dark gray fur and his nose pointed him in the direction from which the breeze had come. He saw it then, a kind of opening raised off the ground. That was good, an opening. Wherever he was right now it was too small, too confining, and there was too much light here. He was trapped and he was exposed. He didn't like that.

His brain needed only an instant and he had assessed the size of the opening and his distance from it. In the next instant he was through the opening and out into the night where he belonged.

As he trotted noiselessly through the darkness, he swung his large, shaggy head back and forth trying to pick up the trail of his prey. There was no danger here, he would have heard or smelled it coming long before it arrived anyway, but just the same he remained in the shadows as often as he could.

There was other blood on the air of course, but most of it was stale, uninviting. The blood he was after was fresh, its owner was newly wounded, perfect for hunting.

The trees were thin here, much thinner than he liked, but there was other cover, other shadows. He came to a space completely clear of trees and other objects. There was more light here and he didn't like that, but out in the open the breeze was also stronger. He stopped and lifted his head as he tried to sift through the countless scents around him. Then he found it. It was faint, only a few molecules whirling through the air, but it was all he needed. Prey was this way. He took off at a lope in the direction of the scent, following each path in a straight line until he found the next set of molecules.

The groupings became closer and closer together and the trail began to heat up. He had a clear fix on the scent now and it filled his nostrils with every breath. He couldn't lose it now even if he'd wanted to. As the strength of the grim perfume increased, his pace quickened. He shot soundlessly through the night at blinding speed. The wind whipped at his face and brought with it more of the intoxicating aroma. It filled him, every part of him, and he loved it.

The trail led him to spot on the ground and he found drops of the blood that had dried not too long ago. The blood was here, but the prey was not.

He lowered his head to the ground and ran his rough tongue across the droplet. The taste seemed to surge from the tip of his tongue and course through the rest of him like a bolt of lightning. He felt his muscles tingle and tense as he was invigorated with the electric thrill of a hunt so near its end.

Suddenly, a noise came from behind him. There was something there that he hadn't detected, not in all the excitement. He turned around and spied his prey, the aroma of that same blood wafting off of it like titillating ripples in a pond. It stood there, only a few of his massive body lengths away, and stared with dumb, omnivorous eyes into the darkness. He could close the gap in two leaps; probably one, but it wasn't worth the chance of falling short and alerting the prey to an attack. The desire to taste that blood again, this time fresh, right from the source as he tore into the steaming hot meat, it overcame him. The prospect, the taste, filled his nostrils and clouded his mind. It was time.

His hind legs coiled and then released with unimaginable speed. He bounded once and closed well over half the distance. He had hardly landed when he was off into the air again and hurtling towards his prey faster than it would even be able to register him. Even if its weak, glassy eyes could have penetrated the darkness, it wouldn't have seen anything but a blurred gray streak, hardly any lighter than the deep gray night from which it had sprung. As it was, the prey was looking the other way and in the blink of an eye they were both on the ground. Its eyes were wide and filled with a boundless terror. Its mouth was agape, preparing to release one final scream that would never come. He bent down and snapped his jaws around the throat as he sliced through the meat as if it were barely there. He wrenched his head back and brought with it the jugular, which made an odd slurping, tearing sound as it detached.

The light in the prey's eyes was instantly extinguished and they were frozen in an eternal gaze of bewildered horror. He lowered his head to strike and tear away at the neck and body again and again and he felt the warm, delicious blood covering his muzzle and running down his throat. He took large, savage bites of the fresh meat and he ate his fill. He reared his head back and opened his jaws to release a long, chilling howl. The meat was his. He had hunted it and he had killed it. The meat was his.

### Chapter 8

Blood. Sweat. Toast. The distinct odors came to him in that order, one after the other. His mouth was dry and held the foul, metallic taste of blood. He used what little saliva he had to run his tongue across dry, cracked lips. He felt bedding beneath him, though it was crusted in what felt like even more blood.

Ryan managed to peel his eyelids apart but he shut them again almost immediately. Daylight streamed in through the open window of his bedroom and assaulted his vulnerable corneas.

He became suddenly aware that he was very, very cold. Ryan was lying half-naked on top of the sheets with covers strewn about and it felt like the window had been open all night.

He pulled his knees up to his chest and drew in his splayed arms to hug himself as he tried to grasp a blanket. He felt around the bed with one hand, searching for the edge of his askew comforter. His hand traced its way across the rumples in the soft sheets, then into a freezing, damp area of a night's worth of chilled sweat. Then, as he brought it closer to his head, his hand landed in something else.

Ryan opened his eyes, raised his head, and looked down. He knew there would be blood; he could smell and taste that much. What he wasn't expecting was just how much blood.

His hand was in the edge of a large splotch of it at the top of his bed, and his head and been right in the center of it only seconds ago. It was still sticky and deep red, and it was at least the size of a large serving platter. Even half-asleep, Ryan knew this wasn't the blood from his fistfight with the man. There was more of it, a lot more. And it was fresher.

Ryan gagged and fought back the urge to retch. He used his hands to backpedal and scramble out of the bed onto the floor and away from the stain, the pool, as fast as he could. His eyes never left it, not even when he had scuttled backwards to the far wall.

He sat there, staring, for a long time, and he barely blinked. It all came back to him, piece by piece in rapid succession, clear as day. Ryan remembered all of it: the pain, the limbs, the fur, the hunt, the kill. He remembered it, but only the events, not the sensations, as if he was remembering a movie he had watched. That detachment however did nothing to lessen the impact of what he had done. There was blood on his lips, in his mouth, because last night Ryan had ripped out a man's throat. Ryan had killed. He had ended a human life, and then he had eaten him.

This time, Ryan did vomit. He coughed and sputtered and gagged and watched as bits of partially digested human flesh spewed out of his own mouth and into a pool on the carpet. Then he vomited some more.

He tried not to look at what he was throwing up, but in the convulsing, Ryan caught glimpses. Mixed in with the blood and bits of human viscera were tiny pieces of t-shirt. Matted clumps of black body hair still stuck to their scraps of skin. Here and there, a fingernail. The sight made him retch even harder, but there was only so much vomiting he could do, and after a while, he had done it.

Ryan dragged himself across the hall and into the bathroom where he managed to pull himself to his feet and put most of his weight on the counter. He rinsed his mouth with tap water over and over. He squeezed half a bottle of toothpaste straight into his mouth and swirled and spit until his jaw was sore. Then came the moment he had feared the most: Ryan finally raised his eyes from the sink and looked at himself in the mirror.

All around his mouth was caked with dried blood, as was the entire side of Ryan's face where he had slept in the pool of it. It was a reddish-brown mask that covered almost two thirds of face, like some sort of costume for a horrific, macabre masquerade. Ryan gazed into his own dark green eyes and searched them for some trace, some hint that behind them now lurked the soul of a murderer. He saw none.

He splashed water all over his face and neck and began to scrub violently, first with his palms, then with his fingernails. At the same time, he took long, unsatisfying gulps of lukewarm water from the faucet. His throat was sandpaper, but he didn't dare swallow. Despite the toothpaste, Ryan could still taste the metallic tinge of the man's blood that had dried in and around his mouth. As badly as he wanted to drink the water, he didn't want to ingest any more human remains than he already had. In the back of his mind, Ryan knew that it probably wouldn't matter anyway: anything he gulped down now would just be thrown up a few minutes later.

When he finally finished, Ryan looked up at himself once again. He looked almost normal. Aside from the black eye that had already begun to heal, Ryan appeared remarkably unremarkable.

There was nothing in his eyes or face to give Ryan away for what he had become, but he could feel that something was definitely different. He tilted his head and examined himself from different angles in the low yellow light of the bathroom, but he saw nothing.

Then Ryan realized that it wasn't his appearance that felt off, it was himself. He closed his eyes and tried to probe the far-off recesses of his mind. Something was wrong in there, he could feel it.

It was as though there was an idea or a thought or a name that was floating just beyond the limits of his conscious mind. He knew it was there, but he couldn't access it. Ryan screwed up his face in concentration and strained to uncover whatever it was that had taken root in his brain without his consent. He pushed and pushed, but nothing.

Ryan yelled out in frustration and felt a bolt of white-hot rage streak through his body. He felt the sudden onset of anger boil over in an instant like an overheated pot, and he lashed out, suddenly furious beyond consolation.

Before Ryan realized what was happening, he felt the muscles in his arm contract and then release as if spring-loaded. Every muscle in his body felt sore, and the tendons in his arm flared up in protest, but the flash of rage drowned it all out.

His closed fist connected with the bathroom mirror with a sickening crunch. It was over as quickly as it had begun and Ryan felt the rage seep away like the receding tide. All that remained was the pain: the soreness in his arm and the sharp new pain that radiated through his knuckles. He was sure that he had broken something, but as he withdrew his hand Ryan saw that it was the mirror that had cracked, not the bones in his hand. It was a long, thin, spidery fracture in the glass of the mirror, radiating out from a smear of blood where his fist had made contact.

Ryan looked down at his fist and unclenched his fingers. They ached as he extended them and blood seeped anew from the hand he had just scrubbed clean.

It was only then that he realized what it was that had felt off. The thing in his head, the portion of the brain that was no longer his own, it was now the territory of the beast. The thing that had burst through Ryan's skin, that had hunted and killed, it was in his house. It was in his bathroom. It was in his head. The beast hadn't disappeared, it had gone into hiding. As Ryan watched a single droplet of blood trail down the mirror, he realized that there was nothing to stop the beast from coming out again, nothing to stop him from changing, from the beast taking over completely, from making him kill again. The anger that had flared up so quickly wasn't his own, it was the beast's. Ryan had been frustrated and a savage instinct had taken over. He was no longer in control of his own body.

Ryan realized now how lucky he had been. Last night he had been alone in the house and the beast had been forced to find prey elsewhere. Scenarios ran through his head, one after the other: what happened when his luck ran out? If the thing could come out at any time, if Ryan truly had no control, what then? What if the next time the beast bubbled to the surface, the house wasn't quite so empty? What if his mother or father was home? What if Ethan was there? He could hear both his mother and younger brother walking around the house above him. What if he changed right now?

Ryan felt like a time bomb without a timer. Like he was playing some bizarre version of Russian roulette where every second that ticked by was another empty chamber, but he had no idea just how many chambers, or bullets, there really were. Ryan was a killing machine that was too fast to see and too strong to stop, and he had no control.

He didn't know how it was physically possible for him to transform into a monster, and he didn't know what that meant for science or religion or the rest of modern thought. At that moment however, Ryan could not have cared less about the How. The only thing in his mind, and indeed it filled every unoccupied corner of his brain, was the What.

All Ryan knew was that he had killed, and that there was no telling when he might kill again. Never before had he felt like he had so little control over his life. He could barely comprehend the problem, and he certainly couldn't solve it, yet it had burst into his life unannounced and it had changed absolutely everything. Ryan buried his head in his hands. He couldn't deal with this, even if he had wanted to. It was too big. And so he ran.

Ryan stumbled out of the bathroom and back into his bedroom. He wanted nothing more than to stay here. He wanted to lock himself away from everyone and everything and allow starvation and dehydration to slowly and painfully deal out the only sentence he deserved. He wondered if he'd have the courage to do it himself.

As much as he wanted to hide himself away, Ryan knew that wasn't an option. If he could transform at any time, the last thing he wanted to do was trap himself in the same house as his family.

Ryan locked the bedroom door so his mother wouldn't find the bloody sheets, and then he rushed to the window. Without thinking any further he clambered up and out the window of his basement bedroom and onto the damp grass of the front lawn. The remnants of his jeans still hung in tatters about his waist and did nothing to protect him from the freezing October air. His naked torso and bare feet were even worse off, but Ryan didn't notice the cold. He didn't notice the pain of bare feet slapping against concrete and asphalt as he ran, and he didn't notice the scream of sore muscles or the pounding protest of his countless bruises.

He ran. He ran without a destination and without stopping. He ran farther than he'd ever run and he never once thought about where he was going or how he would get back. Ryan ran as if he had no intention of ever coming back, and at that moment, he didn't.

As Ryan reached the top of a gradual hill and saw Vanessa's house off to the right, he knew he should have been surprised but he wasn't. He'd never consciously intended to come here, but he figured it made as much sense as anywhere else for his body to autopilot to.

He slowed to a jog, then a walk, as he approached. He knew this wasn't an improvement: now he was putting Vanessa in the same danger he was trying to save his family from. His feet however, were battered and bloodied and would take him no further. The exhaustion of the fear-fueled run was catching up to him, and his breath came in shallow gasps. Ryan didn't know what he was going to say to Vanessa, and he wasn't sure how long he could risk staying here, but he had to rest for at least a moment.

Vanessa's car was in the driveway though her mother's was not. In some detached, distant part of Ryan's brain he thought he remembered something about a business trip, the kind Vanessa's mother often took. It was then that another thought seemed to drift through his consciousness: it would mean one less corpse.

Ryan tried to shake the thoughts from his mind and focus on getting to the front door, which was taking every bit of physical and mental strength he had left.

Vanessa answered the door in a pair of faded jeans and a light blue shirt the precise color of her sapphire eyes. Her sandy hair flowed around her shoulders and she looked up at him as the shadows of confusion and concern fell across her face.

In the first instant after she had opened the door, Vanessa had smiled broadly at the sight of him. The smile had disappeared as quickly as it had come as she looked him up and down: his mashed face, his battered, exposed torso, his raw, bleeding bare feet.

Ryan didn't notice any of it. He lost himself in her eyes and didn't say a word. He had looked into these eyes before, a million times. Each time, they had infused in him a feeling, a confidence, a desire to be a better man. Now however, Ryan knew that wasn't possible. There was no coming back from what he'd done, from what he was.

Finally his strength gave out entirely and his knees buckled. Ryan pitched forward, over the threshold and into Vanessa's unprepared arms. He was too big for her and they both fell awkwardly to the floor.

Vanessa's attempt at a catch turned into an embrace and she knelt there on the floor as Ryan buried his face in her neck. She held him then, with one arm wrapped around his torso and the other cradling his head. Ryan felt one gentle, delicate hand on his bare back and the other softly stroke the back of his head like his mother had used to do when he was a child. Then, for the first time since he had murdered a man in the street, Ryan wept.

Neither of them had said a word, and it stayed that way. After a moment Ryan felt Vanessa's body begin to tremble as she broke down as well. Her tears fell onto his cheek and he sobbed even harder.

She inhaled sharply and tried to muster control of herself.

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to answer. I mean, you don't have to tell me and I don't have to know, but...it's freezing outside, you hardly have any clothes on, your feet are filthy and covered in blood. What happened, Ryan?"

Ryan didn't move. He fought to compose himself long enough to answer, but he knew the battle would be lost the moment he looked into her eyes. He replied in a hoarse whisper.

"Something I can't take back."

Ryan didn't know how long they stayed that way, collapsed in the entryway to the house. Her trembling continued, but her sobs made almost no noise. Ryan's, on the other hand, started again and they came uncontrollably, one after the other. His cries echoed off the hardwood floor and photograph-covered walls and returned to his ears as a strangely-hollow wail.

They didn't move for a long time. Ryan knew every second that ticked away was him testing fate, putting Vanessa in more and more danger of the beast clawing its way out of him and hurting her.

Something about Vanessa's embrace however, kept him there. Ryan knew the danger he posed, but it felt so peaceful here, so warm and comforting, that it seemed impossible for something as terrible and savage as the beast to enter. After a while, he lost himself in the cries and the exhaustion until the beast felt like a distant memory. He couldn't possibly transform here, in her arms. She wouldn't allow it. She would protect him.

Eventually Ryan's sobs subsided. He mustered what courage he had left and he raised his head to finally meet Vanessa's eyes that were, even ringed with red and puffy from tears, so, so blue.

She brought her hand to his cheek. Her thumb softly wiped a final tear from his eye. Vanessa helped Ryan to his feet and kept one arm wrapped firmly around him. She supported what little of his weight she could as Ryan hobbled down the hall to her bedroom. Vanessa eased him onto her bed and then crawled down next to him. She took his head in her hands and held it to her.

Ryan closed his eyes and, once again, he wept.

***

When Ryan awoke, the bed was bathed in a ray of mid-morning sunlight. He felt Vanessa's body against his back and craned his head around behind him. She too, had fallen asleep and her petite frame rose and fell with every breath. He felt her body gently push against his, then recede, in a hypnotic rhythm.

The room was all pastels, down to the lavender bedspread beneath them now. The cream colored walls however, were almost completely covered by hundreds of photographs of different sizes and subjects. Some were candid shots of friends and family, but most were artistic. Ryan had never grasped photography as an art form until Vanessa had taken up the hobby years ago. Most of the high school photography Ryan had seen were snapshots zoomed in on a portion of a sneaker then Photoshopped it into black and white. Vanessa, however, was different. She shot on a high-end SLR and developed all her own film. She didn't even know how to use Photoshop beyond cropping. She studied and emulated Cartier-Bresson, Capa, Lange, and the result was four walls that Ryan could spend hours staring at.

The cheery simplicity of the pastel yellows and blues was offset by these pictures that were anything but simple. The colors of the room were further interrupted by the silver and black of the powerful desktop computer and photograph scanner on Vanessa's desk, along with stacks of photography magazines, movie and CD cases, the odd piece of classic French literature, and at least half a dozen empty soda cans perched precariously on the stacks of everything else.

Ryan had often wondered what Vanessa would have been like if she had grown up with female best friends instead of Ryan and Eli. The bedroom, as well as Vanessa herself, still maintained a distinct femininity, but in Ryan's eyes she embodied just as much "puppy dog tails" as she did "sugar and spice". Ryan loved that about her, the balance. To him it meant that they could enjoy a spirited discussion on government attack chimps or _Over The Top_ , and that although she loved shoe shopping as much as the next girl, she had never once dragged Ryan along.

He lay there for a while, enjoying the sunbeam and Vanessa's silent company. Ryan's mind had been in a whirlwind when he'd first arrived. Thoughts and feelings had been whipping past his consciousness over and over like a tornado. Now however, here, his mind was blissfully clear. To Ryan, the photographs on the walls represented a world full of pure, innocent, beautiful things. Ryan knew he was none of those anymore, and so he didn't belong. The man, the thing, he was now could never exist on these walls, in this world. In her world. There was no more doubt, no more fear, no more guilt. Ryan knew exactly what he had to do.

Vanessa's mother ,had become paranoid about home security since she had divorced Vanessa's father. When she had first purchased the revolver from a pawn shop, she had shown Ryan and Vanessa where it was kept, in case there was a break-in during the many hours of the day when she was not at home. Ryan entered the empty master bedroom and found the gun right where it had always been in the top drawer of the nightstand. He didn't have much experience handling guns, mostly from video games, movies, and his brief stint as a Boy Scout before he had lost interest in basket weaving. This gun however, was as straightforward as he could have hoped for.

It was a snub-nosed, double-action revolver. A .38 Special with a black frame, cylinder, and barrel, with brown wooden grips. It was heavier than it looked and Ryan hefted it in his palm, getting a feel for it. There weren't many moving parts, and even with Ryan's limited experience, he had it figured out in seconds. He went back through the drawer and found a small box of ammunition. He loaded a round in the cylinder and clicked it back into place. He ran through the mental checklist: safety off. Hammer back. Point. Shoot. Simple.

Ryan walked out of the master bedroom and back to Vanessa's room. He looked down at her as she slept and tried to consume every detail. The gun grew heavy in his hand. The longer he stood there without acting, the more of his determination Ryan felt slip away. If he waited to do it any longer, he knew he'd no longer be able to do it at all.

He tore himself away and walked down the hall to look for a suitable spot. Bright rays of slatted light poured into the dining room. The French doors opened onto the back patio which was bathed in warm, morning sun. He looked out into the backyard, into the sunshine.

The grass was tinged an autumn brown, but it was still green enough to look cheerful. Beyond the grass of the yard was an irregular line of planted trees that stood between the grass and the high wooden fence. The deciduous trees were exploding in beautiful colors in everything from deep reds to bright yellows, and even a few lingering greens. It was the same sight Ryan had seen a thousand times over the years he'd been coming to Vanessa's house, but today it was more beautiful than he'd ever seen it. The colors seemed richer, the sunlight seemed brighter, the shadows seemed fewer. The birds that cut lazy circles high in the blue sky above him seemed nearer, slower, more peaceful. This was a good spot.

Ryan double-checked the gun and made sure it would fire with the first pull of the trigger. Safety off. Hammer back.

He stared up into the sky and lifted the gun to his temple. The barrel felt cold against the side of his head and seemed entirely too small for the job he needed it to do, but Ryan had faith.

***

Vanessa awoke with a start. Something had roused her. His rumpled imprint on top of the comforter remained, but Ryan was gone. She rolled off the bed and checked her hair in the closet mirror before leaving the bedroom.

She walked slowly down the hall and tried to force herself awake. The early-morning cry and mid-morning nap had left her drowsy, and she was still feeling the effects.

Sunlight flooded through the French doors and splashed onto the table and part of the kitchen counter. She looked down and saw Ryan sitting at the dining room table with his eyes fixed on something in front of him. Vanessa smiled and moved closer. Ryan wasn't moving. He hadn't moved since she'd entered the room. He hadn't looked up at her or even blinked. It didn't look like he had even breathed.

Vanessa moved closer and the focus of Ryan's unblinking gaze slid into her own line of sight. Lying there, between Ryan and the fruit bowl centerpiece, was her mother's gun.

"I couldn't do it." He said in a flat voice. He didn't look up.

Vanessa rushed to the table and grabbed the gun away from him.

"Ryan! Holy...what the hell are you doing?!" She demanded as her voice teetered on the edge of panic.

"I thought I could do it...I was so sure. I was wrong."

Vanessa tipped the single bullet out of the revolver and put it in her pocket. She set the gun back down on the other side of the table, out of his reach, and sat down across from him. She was furious.

"Ryan, you're going to tell me exactly what is going on here or so help me, I will call the cops."

He didn't say anything. Didn't move, didn't blink.

"RYAN!"

Vanessa had kept her voice under control until now, but that was the end of it. She screamed at him in an expulsion of adrenaline.

It seemed to snap him out of it, and Ryan looked at her.

"You don't have to shout, V."

"Don't you dar- you don't get to call me that! Not right now!" Her eyes were brimming with tears of equal parts anger and fear. Ryan felt bad, but he knew that there were more important things right now than comforting Vanessa.

"I'm sorry I scared you, but I need to talk to you. I need to tell you something." His voice was still flat, almost robotic.

"Damn right you do. You need to tell me what hell you're trying to pull."

"It'll make more sense if you hear it from the beginning...but I don't want to start until you're ready."

She glared at him, one hand on the gun and the other balled into a fist at her side. Slowly however, her breathing evened out and the tears began to dry themselves.

"This better be one doozy of an explanation." Vanessa said through gritted teeth.

And so Ryan began. He started with the woods and the truth about what he had seen attack him. He showed her the bite that had never fully healed. He told her about the fistfight with the man. He told her about the transformation, the hunt, and the kill. Then he told her about the bathroom and the strange, alien rage he had felt well up inside him for no reason at all. He told her she was in danger. He told her he was a werewolf.

When he had finished, silence settled between then and the only sounds were their breathing and a few chirps from the birds in the backyard. Vanessa's gaze had never shifted from Ryan's eyes and her face had never changed from the seething mask.

When she finally spoke, her tone was quiet and determined, as though she was using all the power she had to keep her tone neutral: like a parent trying to entertain the notions of an unruly child.

"But if you were...I mean, wouldn't that only be at the full moon?"

"All I know is what I felt. What I did to the mirror, I don't react like that. I've never reacted like that. It wasn't _me_."

Vanessa swallowed hard and cleared her throat.

"Ryan, I know you very well. I know you well enough to be able to tell when you're lying, and you...you really do believe you're a werewolf. That leaves two problems: either it's true and you could turn into a monster at any second, or it isn't true, but you still believe it is." She lost her momentum and her breath caught in her throat. She swallowed, exhaled, and continued. "Either way, if you killed somebody, I-"

And then Vanessa's composure shattered. Her face, her tone, her demeanor, all went from steely calm to unrestrained tears. There were no cries, no sobs, just streams of silent tears. She still held the unloaded gun, but she put both hands to her head anyway and stared at the wood of the table as her tears splashed upon it.

"Vanessa, I need you to look at me." Ryan said softly, still calm.

She did, through bleary eyes.

"I need you to look into my eyes. I need you to look at the bite on my arm. I need you to believe me when I tell you that I _am_ a monster."

Vanessa set the gun back on the table with trembling hands and wiped tear tracks from her cheeks.

"Why?" She asked.

"Because if you think I'm crazy, you'll try to get me help, and then more people will get hurt. Time is the one thing we don't have. I need you to believe that I'm a monster because..." And then Ryan's voice broke too. He didn't cry, there were no tears, his voice simply cracked and dropped to a whisper. "Because I need you to kill me."

She looked at him with an expression halfway between fury and disbelief.

"Don't be ridiculous. Of course I'm going to get you help. We're going to-"

"No. We're not going to do anything. Look, even if I am just crazy, you said it yourself: that doesn't change what I've done. Nothing can change that. I can't take it back and I can't make it right, but you...you can do...you can do what has to be done."

Ryan watched her face and it hadn't changed: the mix of pain and confusion and self-doubt, the hurricane of conflict behind sea-blue eyes. He began again.

"I don't know how to convince you that I'm not insane. All I can do is ask you to trust me. If you don't do this, if you make me live with what I've done...it's worse than death. And we both know I'll do it again. Maybe next time it'll be my parents or Eli or you. This has to end now, and you have to end it. You have to end it before it takes over again. It's not a life I can live." He finished. Ryan prayed that he had convinced her. He didn't have any arguments left, and it was taking all the self-control he had to remain in his seat. Ryan didn't want to sit here and die, but he knew that's what had to happen.

"And what about me?" Vanessa asked. "You can't live with what you did to a complete stranger? How am I supposed to live with doing this to you?"

"Because you'll be doing a good thing. This world, your world, it's a better, safer place with me out of it. Someone like me doesn't _belong_ in it. You're not killing me, Vanessa, you're saving me. Saving yourself and everyone else I care about who is now in the line of fire. You're saving lives."

She shook her head. "No way."

"Vanessa, we don't have time to argue about this. I love you more than anyone in the world, you are my closest, dearest friend. I want you to be the one to do this."

Her hand had fallen back to the gun as part of a subconscious effort to keep it from Ryan. Now however, the pistol had taken on a very different character and she drew back her hand suddenly as if the gun had become white-hot. She didn't want to touch it now, she didn't want anything to do with it. Still, Ryan could see her mind struggling to process all the information. He only hoped that she made a decision quickly: he could feel himself losing his nerve. Ryan wanted to be dead, but he was getting nervous about dying.

Vanessa didn't say or do anything for a long time. She stared out the window, then down at the gun. Seconds ticked silently into minutes.

Her gaze remained fixed on the small pistol for what felt like an eternity. Ryan slid his hand across the table and into hers: it was limp and lifeless and did not return his reassuring squeeze.

The only reaction Ryan registered was a tear that slid down the side of her reddened cheek. A tear to match hers dropped from one of his eyes, then the other.

Finally she looked up at him, and Ryan felt Vanessa squeeze his hand with all her might. He squeezed right back, then let his eyelids fall.

Birds flitted from branch to branch. Dying leaves lost their grip and spun slowly to the ground. Squirrels scampered carefree up one trunk and down the other.

There was silence, utter and complete, and then a bang.

### Chapter 9

The panes in one of the French doors exploded inward and hurled Vanessa and Ryan to the ground in a hail of broken glass.

Ryan uncovered his face and looked up to see a man standing in the remains of the doorway, the biggest man Ryan had ever seen.

He was six and a half feet tall with gigantic muscles that rippled beneath ebony skin and thick dreadlocks that fell past his massive shoulders. He wore a black t-shirt with cut-off sleeves that were fraying at the ends. Baggy black tactical pants covered tree-trunk legs and most of his huge black combat boots. His face was square with a low-hanging brow and a wide, pointed jaw. Despite the rest of his colossal frame, the eyes were the most striking feature. They flashed with an unnatural glint that made them look brighter and more pronounced than any normal pair of eyes. Ryan might not have even noticed this glint had the eyes been brown or blue, but these were an unmistakable shade of deep violet, and they were unlike anything Ryan had ever before seen. The man spoke with an impossibly low voice, but there was no threat in it.

"My apologies for the door, Ms. Tate, but I cannot allow you to kill Mr. Fisher. At least not yet. Ryan, I must speak with you of an urgent matter, but this place is not safe for such a discourse. There is a park downtown, on the corner of Grand and Sullivan. Do you know it?"

"Uh, yeah, but-" Before he could finish, the man continued in his businesslike tone.

"Good. Please be there in one hour. I will find you. I would recommend picking up a copy of this morning's newspaper on your way. You might find it contains something of a particular interest to you."

The gun had crashed to the floor along with the chairs and the teenagers, and the man stooped down to pick it up.

"This will be returned to you after our meeting, at which point you may do with it what you will. Until then however..." He dropped it in his pocket.

The man turned back to the broken door but as he did, he turned halfway back to Ryan. "Do not blame yourself for what has happened. The events were well beyond your control. And do not fear the beast's power, only the moon can unleash it fully."

He turned, stepped out onto the patio, and was gone.

***

It had been an uncomfortable car ride. Ryan picked at the faded cloth upholstery in Vanessa's Honda as she steered it into the city. He was wearing some of the clothes her father had left when he moved out, and Ryan self-consciously adjusted the sleeves of the blue button-up shirt. The clothes were too big for him, but they had made due. The tennis shoes were old and worn but Ryan figured it was better than the alternative of wearing a pair of Vanessa's shoes, which would have cut off his circulation entirely. In Ryan's mind, the clothes situation had turned out rather well, it was the almost-assisted suicide that had kept the silence awkward.

Things had changed dramatically since that morning. For the first time, Ryan detected a faint glimmer of something that felt suspiciously like hope. When he had awoken that morning, everything had seemed lost. Ryan had felt like the bars had slid into place with a resounding clang, locking him into a terrible life of fear and doubt from which there was no relief. He had scrambled blindly and tried grasp hold of any solution he could come to, and in the moments Ryan had thought would be his last, he was certain of his decision.

Then however, things had changed. The beast was in him, it was a part of him, Ryan knew that. He could still feel it in his head, the strange mental twinge in the corner of his brain. The throbbing pain in his bruised knuckles reminded Ryan that it was more than just a twinge, but Ryan knew that a twinge was nothing compared to the constant danger of Hulking out and hurting people. Only the moon, the man had said, could cause Ryan to do that.

Ryan wasn't sure why he was putting so much stock in the words of a man who had burst into Vanessa's dining room in a shower of broken glass, but the man had seemed to know what he was talking about. The only thing Ryan was sure of was how little he himself actually knew. If this gigantic stranger seemed to know more, that was good enough for Ryan.

He had never been suicidal before. Even the word in his head now sounded ridiculous and foreign, a word that he never thought would apply to him. Now that he was out of the moment, looking at the morning in hindsight, Ryan knew his actions had been rash. The guilt had hung about his shoulders like a wreath of iron chains, and the thought of living with both the guilt and a constant fear for the safety of those around him...it wasn't a life Ryan thought he could live. Now however, he knew the beast was caged, more or less, and that there was a great deal more going on here than he had thought. The guilt still gnawed at him like a dagger in his gut that he couldn't pull out, but he had decided to try and take this insane day one problem at a time.

His most pressing problem however, had him stumped. Ryan and Vanessa had been silent during the car ride so far, in fact they had barely spoken since sweeping up the glass and finding Ryan something to wear. He stared out the window at the blur of gray freeway concrete, and took a deep breath.

"Look, I know saying 'sorry' isn't going to-"

"No, you look." She interrupted as she signaled and pulled off the freeway to a downtown exit. "This morning was...everything was screwed up. I know I'm the one that always wants to talk about stuff, but not...not right now. It's pretty obvious there's something bigger going on here, and I think we need to focus on that."

Ryan was taken aback. Vanessa offering to bury a problem like this was unheard of. It was completely uncharacteristic, and that worried him. He worried that in a moment of weakness he had changed their friendship forever.

Ryan opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. He didn't want to talk about that morning, but he knew that deep down, Vanessa did. The two were built very differently, and although Ryan wanted nothing more than to forget what had happened, he knew Vanessa would never let that slide. He also knew she was right: they needed to focus. Ryan figured they could deal with their personal troubles later.

The man's parting words had hit them both hard. It was comforting to hear someone on the outside of all this say that Ryan was not to blame for what he had done. Ryan didn't know if he could trust the man, much less what he had said, but he was glad that someone had said it. It made him feel much less guilty for thinking it.

"Well I'm sorry for...I'm sorry for showing up on your doorstep all wrecked like that."

It had only been a few hours, but it felt like a lifetime since Ryan had knocked on her door that morning. For the first time since she had opened her front door, he saw Vanessa smile.

"You don't have to apologize for that." She said. "As emotionally handicapped as you are, I knew those pent-up feelings were going to get to you some day."

"Emotionally handicapped?"

"You used to turn off _Scrubs_ five minutes early so that every episode would have a happy ending. Emotionally handicapped."

Ryan laughed and the sound felt strange coming from him, as if he had never expected to hear a laugh again, much less be the one laughing.

"And as I recall," He replied, "you used to go and immediately download all those end-songs so you could clog up your iPod with jangly prog rock."

She smiled again and silence settled between them, only this time it was almost comfortable.

Vanessa navigated the city and they snaked their way toward the park the man had directed them to.

As they pulled into a parallel parking space, with the park on one side and the busy urban sprawl on the other, Vanessa killed the ignition and turned to Ryan before he could open the door.

"You and I," She began "we've been through a lot. I know most of it was in the last twenty minutes, but that...none of it has ever changed anything. No matter what has happened, no matter what is going to happen, this friendship, it's...we're going to make it. There's nothing you could do or say or...try to convince me to do...that is going to change how I feel about you. I know it's been crazy and weird, and I have a feeling it's about to get a lot weirder, but I think if we hold on to this, we'll both make it out in one piece."

He leaned over the gear shift and hugged her tightly.

"Thanks." He whispered.

They broke the embrace and climbed out of the car. Ryan waited as Vanessa ran across the street to buy a newspaper from a vendor, and when she returned they entered the park together.

The park was one of the largest in the city, and by far the largest in the downtown area. It was roughly square, with wide, criss-crossing footpaths and a small duck pond at one end that was fed by a tiny creek that ran the length. The dying leaves rustled stiffly in the breeze. The grass here, like the grass in the backyard, was still mostly green. It threw the red, orange, and yellow leaves on the trees into sharp relief and painted a beautiful, multi-colored landscape. The winding paths through the trees were covered in a thin carpet of fallen leaves which added a satisfying crunch to every footfall. There was a bite to the autumn breeze, but the sun was out and shining brightly in a sky dappled with large gray clouds.

It was close to noon on a weekday, but the park was far from empty. A couple in their mid-twenties walked a dozen paces in front of them. The man had his arm over the woman's shoulder and she held the hand that draped down. They walked erratically and even stumbled a little when their linked bodies lost sync with their own feet. The woman's dark hair stuck out of the knit cap she wore and flicked lightly in the wind as the man leaned down to plant a kiss on top of her head. Ryan wondered if that would ever be him. He wondered if his life, whatever it was about to become, would ever be as simple or carefree. He wondered if he'd ever be able to get that close to anyone without putting them in danger. He wondered if he'd live that long.

There were other patrons that milled about and gave Ryan a much-needed distraction. He saw a mother of two trying to carry one and corral the other. He saw an old man in a flat cap and one too many layers of jacket feeding the birds. He saw a woman jogging to the beat of the iPod strapped to her arm. He saw a man with the sleeves rolled up on his flannel shirt as he hefted down the path a cello in its carrying case. He watched, like someone on the other side of a great glass divide, as the lives of the people all around him went on.

"Got it."

Vanessa had been scanning the morning paper for the article the mysterious man had hinted at. She yanked Ryan down onto a bench.

"Is this him?" She asked.

Ryan looked down to see a face staring back at him in the harsh contrasts of newsprint. He shuddered slightly at seeing the face of the man he had killed, but he did his best to focus on what was happening here and now. The photo was small, as was the article, but as Ryan forced himself to look closer, he saw that the picture was actually a mug shot. Vanessa began to read.

"It says here his name was Frank Spalding...he was out, he had jumped bail on an attempted rape charge. Let's see...he was standing on a residential sidewalk smoking a cigarette when he was attacked...no witnesses. Here we go: 'Police are keeping a lid on the investigation, but given the man's wounds and the nature of the attack, the working theory is that he was killed by a large animal. Authorities say they have no reason to suspect foul play, but when asked if the death could have something to do with Spalding being a known dealer of Vain, the police spokesperson denied comment. Law enforcement entities are urging everyone living in the area to keep children inside after dark and to report to the proper authorities if you see any kind of large animal wandering the streets.' That's the end of the article, I think that was the only one."

"So why did he want me to read it?" Ryan wondered.

"Well, doesn't it make you feel a little better? The guy was a drug dealer and a rapist. I mean it's not like the monster killed a kid or a nun."

Ryan grunted in frustration and massaged the bridge of his nose. "I just need some answers. Where is this guy?"

Just then a large raven landed on the grass a few feet in front of them. It was jet black: from its beak to its tail feathers to its feet the animal was dark as a moonless sky at midnight. Shining out from the blackness however, were the eyes. They were a deep, arresting shade of violet. Ryan was stared right into its eyes, and the bird stared right back into Ryan's.

It took one or two deliberate hops backward and Ryan noticed something strange in the way it moved: there was no avian excitability or alertness. It didn't hop around continuously or twitch its head to and fro, its movements were more graceful. It took one more hop backwards and Ryan and Vanessa both stood up from the bench to follow it, almost instinctively. Then it took flight.

The raven swooped and glided, but made sure Ryan and Vanessa never got too far behind. They had no idea why they were following the bird, but Ryan hadn't forgotten the strange coloration of the man's eyes. Ryan didn't know if the bird belonged to the man or if the bird _was_ the man. After the events of the last twenty four hours, nothing would have surprised him.

Onlookers watched as the two teenagers chased after a large bird that was leading them in a remarkably straight line. Once Ryan and Vanessa got to the edge of the park however, the looking stopped. In the city there were a thousand other things to be looking at, and the raven went unnoticed as it led them across the busy street.

They didn't have to follow it much farther before the bird banked a hard left into an alley. They jogged along after it and came to a stop at the mouth of the passageway.

A liquor store made up one side and a low-rent office building the other. Halfway down, a tall chain-link fence divided the alley in two. On their side, there were doorways without exterior doorknobs, piles of flattened cardboard, plastic bags full of trash set beside overflowing dumpsters, and a cacophony of unpleasant odors. There was not, however, a large black bird with purple eyes. Ryan took a step inside the alley and gave a wide berth to the large puddle at his left. He knew it was probably just rain water, maybe some motor oil, but he didn't want to think of what other kinds of fluids might be mixed in. He took another step and Vanessa reached out and grabbed his arm. He looked back at her and she gave a tiny shake of her head. Ryan shrugged in response and took the step anyway and her fingers slid off him. He took a few more steps and Vanessa followed him hesitantly.

The sun was high in the sky and the city was enjoying midday. In the alley however, there were nothing but shadows and smells. They weren't in the safest part of the city, and even though Ryan had seen, and now even committed, more unspeakable things than any mugger or wino ever had, he stepped cautiously.

A muffled rustle came from behind the dumpster a few feet in front of them. Ryan's heart leapt in his chest and he took an instinctive step back, but curiosity kept him rooted.

The man from the house rose from behind the dumpster and stepped out into the alley, his eyes fixed on Ryan.

"Thank you for coming." He began in his throaty voice.

"You mean you were-" Vanessa piped up from behind Ryan.

"The bird, yes. That is a very long story and it is not the one that I am here to tell."

"Who are you?" Ryan demanded.

"My name is Daniel. I will answer your questions, but I'm afraid we must do so in private."

"How is this more private than the house?" Ryan asked.

"People dismiss the things they overhear being said in darkened alleyways much more quickly than they do in other places."

"And what kinds of things are they likely to overhear?" Ryan pressed.

Daniel didn't answer right away. His eyes had never left Ryan's, not even when Vanessa had spoken up, but now they seemed to burrow even deeper into Ryan. His voice was calm. "The kinds of things they will never forget."

He watched Ryan and searched his face for some kind of reaction: a flinch, a quiver, a flash of doubt or fear in his eyes. Ryan did his best to reveal nothing. He had no idea what this man wanted with him. Daniel clearly knew what Ryan had done to Spalding, but he didn't seem concerned about it in the least.

"However," Daniel began again, "that was not quite my meaning when I said 'private'. I am very sorry, but I have to ask that Vanessa wait in the car."

She stepped up to Ryan's side with her tiny hands balled into tiny fists. "Oh like hell!"

"I am sorry, but I have my instructions. Ryan chose to tell you of his condition, that was his prerogative, and I would not be surprised if he later relays to you everything I am about to tell him. I, however, cannot speak of this in front of you."

"Instructions from who?!" She demanded.

But before she could ask any more questions or get any angrier, Ryan tore his eyes off the man and looked at her.

"Please." He said. He kept his voice even, but forceful. Vanessa wasn't looking at Ryan, she hadn't taken her eyes off Daniel.

"Vanessa. _Vanessa_." She blinked once and her eyes refocused on Ryan's. "I'm sorry," he continued, "but I have to know."

Her scowl turned to frown, but she nodded. "I'll be in the car."

And then they were alone.

"I'm sorry you had to do that." Daniel said, and it sounded to Ryan as though he meant it.

Ryan turned back to face the behemoth of a human being. "She's gone, now spill."

"You have already deduced the largest piece: you were bitten by a werewolf and have now become one."

"Is it permanent?" Ryan asked as he tried to keep his voice from shaking. He already knew the answer, but he didn't want to hear it out loud. In his head that made it all somehow worse.

"Yes." Daniel answered. His tone was matter-of-fact, but tinged with the unmistakable sound of sympathy. "But you are not without...options. There are ways for you to weather the curse. To acclimate, to learn to live with it. There are others who can tell you more, that is not my task."

"It is now." Ryan interrupted, the anger rising in his voice. The animal in him had nothing to do with it, the anger was all him. "You dragged me down here without giving me any information. I did what you asked: I'm here, we're alone, now I need answers and you're the one that's going to give them to me."

Ordinarily Ryan would never have taken such a tone with a man of Daniel's size, but only minutes ago Ryan had been preparing to meet Death. A human, even a giant, shape-shifting human, wasn't quite so intimidating anymore. Daniel stood firm.

"I will not." Daniel replied. His voice was still mild. "I will tell you exactly what I brought you here to tell you and nothing more. It will then be your decision as to what to do with that information."

Ryan wanted to retort, the anger of being yanked around still bubbled inside him, but he said nothing. Daniel continued.

"I have been watching you as often as I can since the night you were bitten. You have a good home, a good family, a good life. I confess I wish that such a curse had not befallen you, but it has and so my wishing is futile. We believe that events are in motion that will change the face of this city forever. You may choose the path that many of your kind have chosen over the centuries: to lock yourself in some crude cage every full moon for the rest of your life and deny your true nature in an attempt to maintain some semblance of a normal existence. Or you may choose to look behind the curtain."

Ryan's anger had all but vanished, replaced instead by a strange curiosity. Curiosity, and dread. "What will I see?" He asked quietly.

Daniel's eyes narrowed. "Such stuff as nightmares are made on. You will see death and pain and you will see these things more than you can imagine, and in ways you dare not. You will come face to face with Perdition herself and you will see her smile as she devours you."

The man fished in his pocket and produced two items. "Administer this at sundown, and do not stand when you take it or you may injure yourself."

He handed Ryan a small syringe of clear liquid topped with a capped hypodermic needle.

"What is it?" Ryan asked.

"An immensely powerful sedative to see you through tonight's transformation. You will not regain consciousness until the following morning. You will still transform, but you will not feel it and the wolf will be asleep as well. _Lock your door_...lest someone enter and see you in the state of the beast. When you wake up, the moon will be gone and your body will be human once more."

"Then why can't I just take this at every full moon?"

"Your body adapts too quickly. This compound is as strong as we can make it and even then it becomes ineffective after one, two doses at the most. As I said, take it tonight, and the next morning begin your preparations for the last night of the cycle. As many and as strong of chains as you can afford. And keep them in good repair."

Ryan dropped the syringe into his pocket and looked at the second item in Daniel's palm: a small white business card with no printing. Instead, it bore a handwritten address in an ornate scrawl: _4197 Mockingbird_.

"The chains will work," Daniel continued, "and if you prefer, it can end there. Be vigilant of the cycle and of your precautions, and you may die an old man in his bed surrounded by grandchildren."

"And if I take this?" Ryan asked, gesturing to the card.

"Then you will still die, but it will be sooner, bloodier, and unimaginably more terrifying." He replied.

Ryan took the card from his hand and examined it. "Well then what's the upside? Why would I ever take it?"

And then, for the very first time, Ryan saw Daniel smile. A different sort of glint flashed in his eyes.

"We will all meet Death, Ryan, that much is certain. The only variable is whether, when our time comes, we are running from him...or at him."

Ryan stared down at the card once more and he heard a soft rustle. When he looked up, the alley was empty and Daniel was gone.

He stared at the card for a long time. There was nothing on the back and nothing but the address on the front. Whatever was at this address, Ryan knew it was dangerous and frightening and not at all the sort of thing he wanted to get caught up in. Yet, Ryan didn't tear up the card and scatter the pieces in the alley. He didn't flick it into the dumpster as he passed. He didn't drop it into the gutter as he walked along the sidewalk back towards Vanessa's car. Instead, he slipped it into his pocket.

Ryan looked through the window of the convenience store on the corner as he waited for the signal to walk across the street. The clock on the wall read 1:30PM. His history class had just gotten out.

### Chapter 10

"You are insane."

"For which one?" Ryan asked.

Vanessa nosed the car towards the exit and they left the freeway, heading back towards the suburbs.

"Both." She said. "You don't take needles from people in alleyways and you don't show up at a place after that same needle guy tells you how painful and scary it's going to be!"

"Well what do you want me to do? Forget everything? This morning I was ready to blow myself away, and all because I didn't have a clue what was going on. I mean the guy didn't tell me a lot, but he told me enough that I know I need to know more. There's something else going on here and maybe I'm a part of that now or maybe I'm not, but either way, I definitely need more information."

"Yes, and if the guy had been trying to sell you a set of supernatural steak knives, I would agree with you. But pumping weirdo liquids into your veins and showing up at random addresses is not the smart way to go about this."

"It's the _only_ way to go about this." Ryan exclaimed. "This guy is the only one who knows anything about anything. Besides, if he wanted me dead he could have done it a hundred times, a hundred different ways by now."

"Well that's comforting." Vanessa replied as she chewed her lip.

Light rain began to speckle the windshield and it filled the silence that had fallen between them.

"How is it you're taking all this in stride?" Ryan asked finally. "Werewolves and shape-shifters and...murders."

She took a deep breath, then exhaled. "I guess I haven't really had the time to think it all through, but now, after seeing what we've seen, not much point in denying it."

"I have a feeling we're going to see a whole lot more."

Vanessa looked down at the syringe in Ryan's hand. "I think you're right. Probably starting tonight."

Vanessa didn't like any of it, and it was written all over her face. Still, Ryan could tell she was on board. For the moment, that was good enough for him.

They spent the rest of the ride hashing out the details of the coming night. It was tricky and dangerous and Ryan wished he could have had weeks to plan, rather than minutes, but that wasn't an option.

Vanessa slowed the Honda to a crawl as they neared Ryan's street. Their luck was still holding: his mother's car was not in the driveway. His Cherokee, however, was still parked at the curb where he had left it the night before.

They finalized their plans and Ryan said goodbye to Vanessa as he stepped out of the car. He'd be with her again in less than an hour, but they had endured so much together that day that it felt strange to be alone again. Ryan shook himself and focused.

With Vanessa's mother out of town, they had agreed that her house was the safest option for a place to spend the night. Ryan had protested, of course: Vanessa was the last person he wanted near him when he transformed. However, she had made the argument that it was better for someone to keep an eye on him rather than simply lock him in a house and hope for the best. They both knew they were putting a lot of faith in Daniel's compound, and Ryan could only pray that its effects would last the night.

He approached his house nervously. Something about the situation made him feel like a criminal returning to the scene. He didn't have his keys, but the window to his basement bedroom was still unlocked. He slipped down into the room and felt goose bumps rise on his skin.

He had been on such an emotional roller coaster in the last day that it felt like he had lived two lifetimes since he had left this room that morning. To Ryan this didn't feel like his bedroom anymore, it felt like it belonged to someone else entirely: someone with zero life or death problems, someone living a life so blissfully simple, yet they didn't even appreciate it. Someone human.

The pool of blood on the bed was still there and it had dried into a deep brown. Ryan stripped all the bedding and stuffed it into a duffel along with his other bloody clothes. He stashed the duffel in the back of his closet and covered it with some of the odds and ends already on his closet floor.

His bedroom door was still locked from the inside, just the way he had left it. Ryan breathed a sigh of relief. This meant that his mother had not been in his room since this morning, that she hadn't seen the blood.

There was a putrid stench from where Ryan had vomited on the floor, and the odor itself made him gag. He set to work quickly, breathing as little as possible, and cleaned it as best he could.

Ryan picked up his phone and scanned the one new text. His mother had tried to wake him that morning, but she'd had to leave before she could see him off. There was banana bread on the counter. Ryan replied to the text, apologizing for this morning and informing her where he'd be tonight. Lying was much easier this way, and Ryan hoped his mother wouldn't check her phone for a few hours until he was safe at Vanessa's.

He pulled off the borrowed clothes and got into the shower again. He dried off, threw on some fresh clothes, grabbed his keys, phone, wallet, the syringe, the business card, and he was out the front door.

***

"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" Ryan asked.

Vanessa had her belt fastened around Ryan's bicep and she watched as the veins in his arm became more visible.

"It's not really a difficult concept." She replied.

"It's not the concept I'm worried about. It's getting stabbed in the arm."

"How did you think the syringe was going to be used? I was going to squirt the stuff in your mouth?" She cinched the belt tighter.

"Ow."

"Make a fist."

Ryan did as he was told and laid back on Vanessa's bed. It smelled like her, and that went a long way toward calming his racing heartbeat.

"You know, I feel like you're a little too good at using household objects to find veins in an arm."

"What, you'd prefer I was worse?"

He had wanted to do this on the couch, since he already felt terrible about even being in Vanessa's house when night fell. She however, had made the point that they didn't know how well or how long the serum was going to work, so they needed to be able to lock Ryan in a bedroom in case he woke up while transformed. That meant that Vanessa got kicked out of her bed, and Ryan prayed that was the worst thing that happened tonight.

"Are you comfortable?" She asked.

"Yeah, I'm good."

The room had taken on an orange hue and even though Ryan couldn't see out the window from his position on the bed, he could tell that darkness was on its way.

Perhaps the strangest event of the afternoon had occurred when Ryan first returned to Vanessa's house. Her mother's gun had been left on the dining room table, and tucked in the shattered door frame had been a blank check. It bore no printed name, and the signature was scrawled and illegible, but the account number looked real enough and it bore the logo of a legitimate national bank. Ryan didn't know if it was any good, but it seemed like a strangely thoughtful gesture. Upon closer inspection, they realized that the handwriting of the address on the business card was different from the signature on the check. Ryan had a feeling he had only glimpsed a small corner of a much larger picture.

"Hang on." She repositioned herself in her perch on the bed so she could approach the vein at a better angle.

"You have 911 on speed dial?" Ryan asked. "In case you miss the vein?"

She rolled her eyes. "You need speed dial for three numbers? Besides, shouldn't I be calling animal control?" She smiled.

"Not if this works."

"Hold still..."

Ryan braced himself for the sting of the needle, and then it came. His adrenaline was pumping so fast he barely felt it. Ryan was nervous that Vanessa would do something wrong and he would bleed out. He was worried that everything would go fine with the shot, but that the sedative wouldn't work and he'd transform before Vanessa could get the exits blocked. Most of all he was afraid of feeling that awful pain again. The transformation itself had opened doors of bodily agony that Ryan had never imagined. His focus since then had been on the hunt and the kill and the consequences, but now that the transformation was coming closer, Ryan was terrified that he would have to endure it again.

"Oookay." Vanessa said and her voice shook slightly. "I think I did it."

Ryan shook his head. "You put it all in?"

"There wasn't much there, but yeah. Let me know when you feel-"

And Ryan slipped into a blissful unconsciousness.

***

It was a sensation unlike anything Ryan had ever felt. It wasn't as simple as waking up, it was as though he was being slowly pulled from the depths of an ocean trench, and it felt as if he would never break the surface.

He felt his mental faculties return to him one at a time in a slow conveyor belt of consciousness. Awareness, reason, sensation, memory. When Ryan was finally able to open his eyes and test his limbs, he felt as though he hadn't used them in months. They were leaden and awkward and it required great concentration to move them. Still, Ryan could see that it was day, that he was still in Vanessa's bedroom, and that he was once again, more or less, human.

His t-shirt was strewn about his chest in ragged tatters and his sweatpants looked thin and stretched.

As the feeling returned to his extremities, Ryan realized there was something in his hand. Vanessa was curled into a ball on the floor next to the bed in a nest of couch pillows and mismatched blankets. Her hair flowed over the lumpy pillow and Ryan watched as her petite, upturned nose flared slowly in and out. She was sound asleep, but her arm was still up on the bed, her hand in Ryan's, where it had been all night. Ryan smiled and stroked it with his thumb for a moment before gently placing it back down beside her.

Ryan wondered, then, what he would ever do without her. They had known each other for so long that Ryan couldn't remember anything about his life before Vanessa had entered it. Now and again he found himself wondering what his life would have been like if the two had never met, or if they had met later in life. If they had met in tenth grade instead of first grade, would they have become friends? Would Ryan be the person he was today? Would they have dated? Ryan smiled at the absurdity of it. They had known each other for far too long for that to be an issue; it had never crossed his mind to think of her like that. Ryan smiled again. Even if he'd ever had that inkling, he knew she was still way out of his league.

Vanessa didn't wake until Ryan was just tipping the fourth pancake onto the growing stack next to the stove. The last time she had walked into this room with Ryan already there, he had been trying to kill himself. Ryan knew that pancakes wouldn't erase a memory like that, especially not his pancakes, but he had to start somewhere. She ruffled her fingers through her hair and yawned.

"You made it." She said.

"Yeah...thanks." Ryan tried to busy himself with breakfast, but there was one question burning in his mind. "Did you see me? I mean, when I changed?"

Her eyes darkened. "Yeah."

"And?"

"And it was...really, really weird. The change itself, I mean it looked terrible. I can't believe you survived at all, let alone twice."

"What about after that? What did I look like?"

She scrunched up her nose and squinted into the backyard. "Umm, scary as hell. I mean, I don't know, it's what you described. But I guess because I knew it was you, I was okay with it. Of course the whole time I was terrified that you'd wake up suddenly and kill me, but you know."

"Do you want to talk about something else?" Ryan ventured.

"I would love to." Vanessa replied quickly. "Give me a couple days to handle it I'll be cool, just...not right now."

"Sure. How many pancakes do you want?"

"As many as I can hold."

***

There had never been much doubt in his mind. The moment Ryan had pocketed the business card, he had known deep down he was always going to follow it up.

It was late Saturday afternoon, and Ryan had spent much of the day mending fences. He and Vanessa had enjoyed a lazy breakfast, talking about anything other than the night before, and then Ryan had made his way home. He had stopped at a thrift store on the way and bought some clothes. He didn't want to arouse suspicion by walking into his house shirtless and in sweatpants. Thankfully, no one at the store had given him too much of a second look.

Ryan had spent most of the rest of the day with his family. He hadn't seen them in days, and those days in particular had felt like years. The awful truth never fully left his mind, but being around people who knew nothing about it was comforting.

He and Vanessa had been dodging Eli's calls for two days, and Ryan felt terrible about it. He knew he was going to have to tell Eli eventually, in fact he was looking forward to having another perspective on everything, but today was not the day. Instead he had placed a brief call to his friend and apologized. Ryan said he was sorry, but that something had happened that he needed to deal with. Ryan took it as a true sign of their friendship that Eli didn't pry into what was going on. All he had said was that he would cover for Ryan as needed, and that he'd be there when it was all over. What Ryan didn't tell him was that it would never be over, not really. That was something that would have to wait for the real conversation.

Ryan figured that he had at least an hour, maybe two, before moonrise and the final night of the full moon. Ryan was relying on the hope that whatever this address held, it would be something or someone that could help him, at least through tonight. He had told his parents that tonight would be spent at Eli's, and though his mother wasn't thrilled at the idea, she did not protest.

Vanessa had begged him not to go, but just like the argument about the sedative, she relented quickly. It wasn't in her nature to back down in an argument, not if she could help it, but Ryan was determined to do this, and she saw it in his eyes. Then she had changed tactics and tried to convince Ryan to let her go with him to the address. He shot this notion down even faster.

The address had taken him to the outskirts of downtown, into an industrial district surrounded by low-income neighborhoods. Mockingbird Road ran parallel to the waterfront, and in between the street and the sea stood a long line of large industrial warehouses.

Many of the warehouses were affixed with corporate logos or names of businesses. Some, like 4197, had only their numbers stenciled in large print on the sides of the buildings.

4197 stood halfway down the long street that was Mockingbird. There were over a dozen other warehouses, all around the same size, but in varying conditions. Some showed obvious signs of rust or weather damage, and Ryan even thought he saw a few of what might be bullet holes poked in the brick or metal walls. Others, those with recognizable corporate logos, were in much better shape, with fresh paint and intact windows. 4197 was somewhere in the middle: its brick walls looked old and neglected, but there were no obvious signs of decay. The windows, set high up on the building, also looked as though they had seen better days, but they all seemed to be intact. There was also an over-sized garage door that faced the street. The door itself was windowless and bland, but carefully maintained. The only personnel entrance that Ryan could see was a single door tucked a quarter of the way back on the side of the building. The entrance was lit by a single bulb fastened to the end of a rusty fixture with a down-facing shade.

Ryan drove back and forth past the warehouse four times before he stopped. He was trying to collect as much data about the place as possible, since in his mind it was looking more and more like a place where he was likely to be killed, stuffed into a canvas bag, and dropped in the ocean. When he finally parked the Cherokee, it was under the only street light nearby, located at the far end of Mockingbird. Ryan wasn't fooling himself into thinking that a street light and slight public exposure might deter any car thieves, but he figured it was better than deliberately parking in the shadows. He hoped it wouldn't matter anyway, since he figured no thief in their right mind would want to steal a clunker like his.

Ryan cut the engine and debated with himself for the last time if he should even get out of the car. The sun was creeping lower in the sky and the shadows cast by the buildings around him grew longer.

He took a deep breath in a futile attempt to calm his nerves about whatever lay beyond that single, steel door of 4197 Mockingbird Rd. Ryan stepped out of the Jeep and swung the door closed behind him.

As he did, his key ring flew off his finger, fell to the pavement with a short clang, and skidded somewhere behind the rear tire. Ryan cursed his own clumsiness and stepped over to pick them up. He crouched down and felt around behind the tire for a moment before his fingers closed around his small quarry. He retracted his hand and stood up.

Ryan's heart leapt in his chest and adrenaline exploded through his veins. A man stood on the opposite side of the car, where a split second before there had been nothing. Ryan peered at him through the windows of the Jeep and stepped around to the front of the car. The man took the same steps until they were eye-to-eye with only the front of Ryan's car between them.

The man was in his mid twenties, but his face gave off a cruel sort of smirk that Ryan thought made him seem much older. Unlike the ragged clothes and combat boots of Daniel, this man wore designer jeans and an expensive-looking black leather jacket. His hair was styled like something out of a magazine, but it was partially hidden behind the name-brand sunglasses perched high on his forehead.

"You must be Ryan." The man said.

"You must be...really creepy." Ryan replied.

His smirk turned into a thin, lipless sneer. "What can I say, I enjoy a bit of theatricality." And Ryan thought he detected a slight hint of an accent, possibly English. "What do you enjoy, Ryan?"

"Answers." Ryan said shortly.

The face itself was long and thin, and the features were harsh and angular with a particularly straight, prominent nose. His narrow eyes twinkled with a strange air of amusement. He wore a carefully-manicured beard of close-cropped, fashionable stubble that went a long way toward hiding a rather weak chin.

"I see. Straight to business. I suppose I can accommodate that. After all, I am a businessman."

"What line of work is that, sneaking up on people in bad neighborhoods?" Ryan asked.

"Generally whichever line requires the least amount of work. But today, it's mergers and acquisitions."

"Uh huh, and why the change?"

"My sometimes-employer heard about your handiwork in the suburbs the other night, he was very impressed. He sent me to look into you, perhaps arrange a meeting. A man with your particular talents is very valuable to a man like him." The stranger finished.

"You call eviscerating a man in the street a 'talent'?" Ryan demanded.

"Oh, not me. I haven't decided what to call it. My employer, however, yes, I believe he sees such a thing as an asset. Why, what do you call it?"

"Murder." Ryan said flatly.

"Then it appears we're using very different dictionaries, which is unfortunate." The man replied. "Though if that's the case, I suppose you're in the right place." He tilted his head towards 4197. "Those...interlopers happen to share your rather antiquated, and if I do say so, quite unprofitable, sentimentalities. It's probably just as well that they got to you first."

"If you're not from the warehouse, who the hell are you?"

"Call me Isaac." He extended his hand, but Ryan kept his own hands balled into fists at his side. "And if you ever need anything...procured, acquired, extracted...I am your man."

"I'll keep that in mind." Ryan said and returned the man's smirk. "Who sent you? Who wants me?"

"I'm sorry, but I am still a professional. That information, I'm not allowed to give. You have a pleasant evening."

Ryan opened his mouth to demand more information, but the man called Isaac turned on his heel and walked back within the shadow of the building. He pressed his hand to the building and as Ryan watched, the hand went into the wall. It was as though his hand had become one with the shadow on the wall and his body was merging with it. Isaac turned around and gave Ryan a smile as the rest of him melded into shadow and was gone.

Ryan felt like he should have been shocked, like what he had just seen should be enough to sent him right back to the Cherokee and then home. Now however, his curiosity burned within him like a wildfire. Ryan wanted answers now more than ever, and he knew those answers were only a few hundred feet away.

He began to walk down the worn sidewalk and each footfall echoed sharply off the buildings that loomed around him. 4197 grew closer with every step and, as it did, Ryan felt his courage begin to dwindle. He wasn't worried about being physically hurt so much as he was about being disappointed. Ryan had no idea what he was expecting, but he couldn't help but hope he would find an answer to all his questions. He knew Daniel had made no such promise, Ryan had just filled in the gaps with his own assumptions, and that's what worried him now: that he had assumed too much.

As he approached the large warehouse stenciled 4197, Ryan tried to push the thoughts out of his head. He wanted to focus, because as anxious as he was, he couldn't shake the feeling, the hope, that whatever lay beyond that door was going to change his life even more drastically than had that night in the forest.

The door that stood between Ryan and these hopes was not much to look at. It was set a ways back against the side wall of the brick building, closer to the street and garage door end of the rectangle than the waterfront end. As Ryan had suspected, it was the only entrance. At one point it looked as though the door had been painted an unpleasant shade of industrial olive green, but it was now just bare, weathered steel. The downturned shade that held the flickering light bulb also bore signs of an ancient paint job of the same color. Nature, however, had decided on a different color and the whole shade was corroded with reddish rust.

The doorknob was the only feature of this entrance that looked like it was in good repair: it was heavy and brushed steel, and though still weather-beaten and aged, it wasn't nearly as bad as the door on which it was mounted.

He had been so preoccupied with getting to the door that Ryan wasn't sure how to proceed now that he was there. The idea of knocking at a door like this, under circumstances like these, seemed ridiculous. Still, he saw no other option so Ryan raised his hand to knock. His fist was mere inches from the metal when a stern, electronic voice cut through the silence of the approaching night.

"It's unlocked." It was a woman's voice, heard over some hidden intercom. Ryan looked all around the doorframe but couldn't see one. Nor could he see any camera or window through which the mysterious woman could have seen him coming. Regardless, he knew he was in it now.

Ryan lowered his hand to the knob, turned, and pushed. At first the door didn't do anything and Ryan felt sure it was locked. He pushed again however, much harder, and the door gave way with a loud creak. He stumbled across the threshold and into a small, brightly-lit room.

The space was tiny, no more than ten feet square with perhaps eight foot ceilings. It had worn industrial carpeting and stark white walls without any décor. On the wall opposite Ryan was another large steel door, identical to the one he had just come through, though in much better condition. To his left was a large potted plant that was actually many plants all sharing the same pot, with some of the shoots nearly reaching the ceiling. In the right corner, beside the far door, stood a large reception desk that dwarfed the rest of the room and obscured most of the elderly woman seated behind it.

She was in her early seventies, Ryan guessed, with silvery hair teased high. She peered into a paperback novel through gold-rimmed bifocals that perched on the edge of her long, beak of a nose. The rounded desk behind which she sat reminded Ryan of a hospital reception desk: one surface at the ordinary level for computers, and then a second, raised level on which the patient could sign paperwork. Because of this second level, Ryan could only see the woman from the neck up, but given what he could see of her, he guessed she was wearing a sweatshirt featuring kittens playing with balls of yarn.

Ryan didn't have the faintest clue of what to say, but he opened his mouth just the same and hoped something sensible would come out. He never got the chance however, as the woman pressed an intercom button on her desk. She leaned over slightly to speak into it, but had never once taken her eyes off the pages of her book.

"Did someone order a civvie?"

Her question was answered almost immediately, but not by the other end of the intercom. Instead, a man strode through the opposite door.

Dr. Webster extended his hand to Ryan who, still not comprehending, shook it automatically. He wore a burgundy Polo shirt tucked smartly into a pair of crisp khakis and ending in dark brown, leather shoes. He looked as if he'd just come from the country club.

"Thank you, Mrs. White." The doctor said. He stopped, looked Ryan up and down, and flashed his movie-star smile. "Ryan. It is truly great to see you again. You're looking very well. I'm sorry to surprise you like this, but we needed to gather a little more information before I could speak to you directly again. At the hospital there were still things that needed to be sorted out, questions that needed to be answered. We weren't sure if you were the kind of person...well the kind of man we could trust."

Ryan had recovered enough to regain his power of speech. "How do you know you can trust me now?"

"Well, I suppose we don't." Dr. Webster replied. "But we're hopeful." He smiled again. "You're here, and that's a good start. And you took the sedative last night, that's also a good sign. And Daniel spoke rather highly of you, and that's more than good enough for me. He'd been watching you for quite a while, as I'm sure he told you. He's a very good judge of character."

Ryan could feel the anger rising again. After all this he was still getting yanked around. "You still haven't told me why I'm here."

"You're absolutely right." Dr. Webster spun around and rested his hand on the knob of the door he'd just come through. "Mrs. White, we're not expecting anyone else tonight."

"Understood, Robert." The old woman replied, and Ryan heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being pumped behind the desk.

Dr. Webster motioned for Ryan to come across the tiny room. As he did, Ryan got a look behind Mrs. White's high desk. He saw security monitors for the cameras he had been unable to spot, an office telephone, small computer, and the intercom receiver. And there, slung casually across the aging woman's lap, was a long, double-barreled shotgun. Mrs. White was so small and looked so frail that Ryan imagined the recoil from a gun like that would send her sprawling to the floor. Still, something in the way she held it told Ryan this was a woman he shouldn't be quite so quick to judge.

Dr. Webster turned the knob and pushed open the large door, and Ryan made a quick mental note never to come through the front door of this place unannounced.

### Chapter 11

Aged wood. Musty books. Burnt popcorn. Ryan followed Dr. Webster through the entryway and stepped over the raised threshold. The solid steel door closed behind them with a soft clang.

It had been a wild few days for Ryan, filled with expectations that were met by the unexpected, and the contents of the warehouse were no different. This was nothing like the big, shadowy, industrial warehouses Ryan had seen on TV. It was a motley collection of tiny details that added up to one big picture: it felt friendly.

The whole place was one, wide-open space, with a few exceptions. The garage doors that Ryan had seen from the outside weren't visible here, but instead, immediately to his left, a pair of giant, floor-to ceiling aluminum sliding doors separated the garage from the rest of the space. At the other end of the warehouse, the corners jutted inward, which created two more separate, enclosed spaces.

The building had two levels, but the upper level merely ran around the border of the building, leaving a large rectangular hole in the middle that gave the entire place a much more open feel and allowed virtually the entire interior to be seen from anywhere in the building. The second level extended ten or fifteen feet inward from the wall and the rest was open space, with a metal safety railing running the length of the edge. High on the second level a row of windows also ran around the entire building, but it looked as though they had been blacked out by several layers of paint. They still managed to let in some diffused natural light, as did the few large skylights in the ceiling that had been left unpainted.

There were four metal stairways that led to the second level, one in each corner of the rectangular building. The tiny room through which Ryan had just entered was directly beneath one of the staircases on the street side, nearest the garage doors. Ryan didn't have the proper angle to see much of the upstairs, but for the moment he didn't care. The lower level was more than enough to keep his eyes and his mind occupied.

The floor was bare concrete but it was covered by a clashing assortment of rugs that made the space feel cozy. It reminded Ryan of Eli's basement, but these rugs were in much better shape than Eli's discarded carpet squares.

The center of the ground floor was shared by two main fixtures: the first was a collection of mismatched sofas and chairs arranged in a wide, loose, inward-facing circle. The second feature, beyond the circle, was a pool table whose green felt looked like it hadn't been replaced in decades. Farthest from Ryan and the street were the two enclosed spaces that ran the height of the building. He could see now that even though they looked like uninterrupted columns, they were actually divided at the second floor, which created four separate rooms.

The wall closest to him held a line of tightly-packed bookshelves. Past the bookshelves was a small kitchen area complete with stove, microwave, counters, sinks, and a large refrigerator. The wall opposite Ryan was one long counter, and it held a vast medley of scientific and industrial equipment, from beakers, flasks, and burners to a circular saw and an electric furnace.

Soft natural light filtered through the windows and skylights and fell in hazy, contorted shapes over the most mismatched collection of stuff that Ryan had ever seen. Coming to the warehouse was supposed to have provided answers, not prompted more questions. Ryan was even more baffled than before. Finally, Dr. Webster spoke.

"I know it doesn't look like much." He began. "But it works for what we need it to."

"Well whatever it is, it's...amazing." Ryan replied, and he meant it. "What on earth is this place?"

The doctor regarded Ryan for a moment. The corners of his mouth turned upward in a small smile and he opened his mouth to speak. As he did however, a voice crackled over the intercom. Mrs. White's tone was full of urgency.

"Robert, I've just received word. They're on their way back." Her voice dropped. "It doesn't sound good."

The smile vanished from his face and he spun around to shove open the door behind him. Dr. Webster stuck his head through into the small lobby they had just come through..

"What is it?" Webster demanded.

"Evelyn, over the radio. It wasn't a clear signal but it sounds like something went very wrong." The elderly woman answered.

"Lockdown?" Webster asked.

"I don't know, but it sounds like they'll definitely need the infirmary prepped."

The doctor nodded. "Let me know as soon as you get more information. ETA?"

Mrs. White shook her head. "Couldn't say."

Dr. Webster pulled the door closed behind him. He spun around to face Ryan. "With me. Now."

The doctor raced across the ground floor of the warehouse. He vaulted over furniture and obstacles and Ryan struggled to keep pace. Webster was fast and agile and he moved like a hurdler half his age.

It took Ryan a few more seconds than Dr. Webster to get to the other end of the warehouse. They were at the enclosed room in the far corner from the entrance and the doctor dashed inside. When Ryan caught up and entered the small room himself, he saw that it was a miniature infirmary.

There were beige countertops on both sides, and between them was a single, adjustable hospital gurney with white cotton sheets pulled tight. The far countertop held a variety of small medical equipment and instruments, and the nearer countertop had a sink and small refrigerator full of differently colored vials and tubes. A large observation window was set into the wall, and it looked out onto the rest of the warehouse.

Dr. Webster fumbled with something at the far counter and then deftly reached up behind him, without looking, and flicked on a large surgical lamp on a wide-swinging arm above the bed.

"Ryan," the doctor began quickly, "do you know anything about first aid?"

"No, not really." He replied.

"Does the sight of blood make you queasy?"

"I don't think so."

"Good." Webster responded. "We have no idea what we're going to be dealing with when they get back, so I might need you and I might not." The doctor turned back to face Ryan. "If I tell you to do something, I need you to do it immediately. Do not ask why, and do not doubt yourself or me. Understood?"

Ryan nodded.

"I know you have a lot of questions, and I'm sorry this had to happen right now, but I promise I'll sort everything out once this is over."

"Okay." Ryan replied. He was nervous. He had no idea what was going on or what the doctor might ask him to do.

"First, I need you to go back out there and open those big metal doors at the front. Did you see them on the way in? You know what I mean?"

Ryan nodded again and hurried out of the infirmary. He made his way back across the ground level of the warehouse to the gigantic double doors. When he got there, he saw they were on rollers. It took most of his strength to move them, but threw his weight behind it and the first door began to give way. It slid open with a metallic screech and gave Ryan his first look into the darkened garage.

There were over a dozen vehicles parked in two rows on either side, and there were empty spaces for a few more. Against one wall stood a workbench, and an array of mechanical tools hung from the pegboard above it. The cars themselves were a bizarre assortment: two windowless white service vans stood next to a small number of nondescript commuter sedans and SUVs. Ryan saw a pair of dirt bikes parked a careful few feet from a very expensive-looking sport bike that, even in this light, glinted a fiery, polished red.

On the other side of the garage stood a large RV, and next to it, a pair of SUVs more rugged than the other cars. Nearer to Ryan rested a large, dark-colored American muscle car in a model that Ryan figured to be at least thirty years old. There was also a sleek, silver, two-door convertible that looked just as old as the muscle car, but much more lavish and European.

The rumbling sound of a large engine reached Ryan's ears. He snapped out of his admiration and rushed to get the other door open. As he did, the outer garage door began to whirr and the large steel door to the outside began to retract.

He heard the van long before he saw it. The motor was being gunned down the street at what sounded like a breakneck pace, and when it screeched into Ryan's view, he was sure it would not be able to stop before it crashed into him.

The driver veered into the garage and skidded the van to a stop. It was a service van, like the other two in the garage, and Ryan saw the rear doors burst open and the massive frame of Daniel emerge. He carried in his arms a younger man with fair hair and a great splotch of blood spreading slowly from the middle of his chest. Daniel was followed by the forms of two other people, a man and a woman, then the drivers' side door swung open and she emerged.

Ryan had heard the term "thunderbolt" before, but until now he had never known exactly what it meant. The events unfolding around him were terrible and terrifying, but in this moment, frozen in time, they all faded from his thoughts like a wisp of smoke carried off on a sudden wind.

She sprang from the cab with a liquid grace and her chocolate hair bounced once as she landed. Her clothes were simple: dark jeans and a black tank top, but even if she had been wearing a burlap sack, this would have been the most beautiful woman Ryan had ever seen.

Her long, slender frame was svelte without being lanky, and lithe without being willowy. Slender abdomen was set precariously atop the narrow, rounded triangle of her pelvis and widened slightly into the lean shoulders and chest that made up the top half of the hourglass.

It was her face, however, that had truly captivated him. Long brown hair fell past high, pronounced cheekbones that formed into a dainty, pointed chin. Perched just above it were her deep scarlet lips, which stood in crimson contrast to the brilliance of her eyes. They were framed by long quizzical eyebrows and the dark, smoky makeup around them made the electric green of the irises stand out even brighter. Ryan's own eyes were a forest green with streaks of brown, but hers were of a hue and intensity he had never before seen. They were the color of sun-dappled leaves of mid-morning May, and they shone from beneath her brow like the eyes of a cat reflecting the glint of an evening fire.

Their eyes had met only for a moment, a moment that seemed to last an hour, and then the spell was broken. Sound and sensation rushed back to Ryan much the way they had after waking up from the sedative.

Daniel and the others sped past Ryan, too focused to acknowledge him. He followed nervously behind the hasty procession, acutely aware of the fact that he had no idea of what was going on, and at the same time petrified that he might be called upon at some point to help try and save this man's life.

The doctor met the group halfway, then hurried back with them to the infirmary.

"What happened?" Webster asked anxiously. "I thought this was a milk run."

"So did we." The beautiful brunette said. "Renart disagreed."

"What?!" Dr. Webster asked incredulously. "Renart wasn't supposed to be anywhere near this, this was way too small-time for him!"

She shook her head. "He had a guy there, a new guy."

" _Kitsune_." Daniel growled as he lowered the young man onto the gurney.

"Calls himself Mr. Ito." The girl said.

"And he did this?" The doctor asked.

It was then that Ryan got his first glimpse of the wound. A six-inch hunting knife was buried in the center of the man's chest. The blood still flowed freely.

Daniel nodded. "One of the others, a human, distracted me and Ito surprised Miles from behind." He replied. "Ito escaped."

"Don't worry about that now." Dr. Webster instructed. "Everybody out but Daniel. Ruby," He looked at the older woman, "go upstairs, see if you can put something together to stop the bleeding. Ev, help her."

The brunette nodded and everyone filed out of the tiny infirmary.

The two women took the nearest staircase to the upper level and disappeared from sight. Ryan and the remaining man stood helplessly outside the infirmary and watched the progress through the observation window. Ryan watched as Daniel applied towel after towel to the man's chest, and each one came away soaked through and dripping with blood.

"You must be Ryan." said the man standing next to him.

He was tall, even compared to the five-foot eleven-inch Ryan, but still not as tall as Daniel. Unlike Daniel, this man was thin, almost too thin, and Ryan thought he looked rather sick. The skin on his hands was stretched tight over the bumps and ridges of bones that seemed to Ryan a little too visible. His clothes hung loosely on his angular, rickety frame and, though they looked clean and new enough, the clothes themselves looked far out of fashion, even to someone who owned as many blank, solid-color t-shirts as Ryan did. The man wore a crisp white collared shirt beneath a navy sweater vest with an argyle print. He wore freshly-ironed khakis that seemed to ride too high, and dark brown wing-tips.

His voice was soft and kind and, though he hadn't taken his eyes off the infirmary window, it made Ryan feel more at ease, despite the horrific things happening before them.

"Yeah, I...is there anything I can do to help?" Ryan asked quietly.

The man gave a kindly smile. "I doubt it. Doc Webster is the most capable surgeon in the hemisphere. If there's anybody on this side of the Pacific that can heal Miles, it's him. I'm Tom, by the way."

The man's face was as spare and gaunt as the rest of him. Dark circles accented sunken gray eyes that seemed to be set too close together above his large, hooked nose. His steel-gray hair was combed and parted distinctly to one side in a style that, like his clothes, gave the impression that he had just walked out of a very different time and place.

"Nice to meet you." Ryan extended his hand.

For the first time, Tom took his eyes off the three men in the infirmary and looked down at Ryan's hand. Then he turned his gaze back to the grisly scene. His hands remained in his pockets.

"It's nothing personal, Ryan."

"Oh...okay..." Ryan replied and an awkward silence fell that Tom didn't seem to notice. "You seem very calm, considering."

"Death is not something I fret about." Tom replied. "And as I said, Miles' chances are quite good with Robert here. I have seen much worse."

Ryan watched as Daniel's hands, glistening crimson, applied pressure to the gaping wound. "So have I." Ryan muttered, almost to himself.

"I can imagine." Tom replied. "I wish I could tell you it gets better, but obviously," he gestured to the bloody mess beyond the glass, "that would be untrue."

"Why not 'fret' about dying? Doesn't it worry you?"

The man seemed to smile, but it was as if the expression had only gotten to his eyes, not the corners of his mouth. "I'm worried about Miles, of course. But death, as a concept?" He shook his head. "It's like the big roller coaster at the carnival: it's only scary the first time."

Without another word, the man turned to Ryan and extended the hand he had refused him earlier. Ryan looked at the outstretched hand, puzzled, and extended his own to shake it.

Ryan watched as his own hand met Tom's and then, as he was about to grasp it, nothing. Ryan saw his hand pass through the older man's as if there was nothing there at all. He waved his hand back and forth through the man's palm and felt only air.

Ryan looked up at Tom inshock. Tom gave a sad smile. "I rode that roller coaster long ago."

"You're telling me you're dead?"

"Showing you." The man corrected. "People don't tend to believe you when you just _tell_ them you're a ghost."

"Incredible." Ryan said softly.

"Not on this end." The specter replied as he turned back to watch Dr. Webster and Daniel's progress. "Dull is more like it."

"How long?" Ryan asked.

"November, 1943." Tom replied.

"If you don't mind me asking," Ryan began hesitantly, "...how?"

Tom gave the same sad smile that started at his eyes but ended before it got to his lips. "I was walking home from campus, looking forward to a long night of grading term papers. I felt someone tackle me from behind and he lifted my billfold. I chased after him, he pulled a gun and fired a few random shots over his shoulder. I guess one of them caught me, because I ran another fifty yards before I turned back to see my body lying in the middle of the street. Strange feeling, looking at yourself like that. I'll never forget it."

Ryan was dumbstruck. "What about an...I don't know, an afterlife? Do you mean that everyone who has ever died is wandering around somewhere, like you?" His thoughts leapt back to Frank Spalding and he resisted the urge to check over his shoulder.

Tom shook his head. "I don't have many more answers than you do. Not everyone becomes a ghost, but I don't know what was different about me or my situation. I've been searching for the answer to that question for nearly seventy years. If there is an afterlife, I suppose I didn't make either guest list." He sighed, then smiled. "Of course, the real head-scratchers are the little things: why can I ride in a car but not shake a hand? If I'm intangible, why don't I plummet right through the ground? After a while you just have to accept a certain level of ignorance. You just have to go with it. Especially in this place, with all of us."

At first Ryan wasn't sure what the man had meant, but then,"You mean that everybody here is some kind of..."

Tom smiled again and Ryan thought he saw the slightest twinkle in the ghost's dim eyes. "Yes. All of us, in one form or another, children of the night. What music we make."

Ryan's mind raced as to what that could mean. A ghost stood before him, a warrior-shapeshifter in the next room, and he himself contained a beast that would send the fiercest human man screaming. Ryan couldn't help but wonder: what was the doctor? What was the woman, or the dark-haired girl? What was the young man bleeding to death on the table? What _else_ was out there that wasn't quite so welcoming? The shadowy man Isaac sounded like he worked for somebody, somebody worse. The fair-haired man, Miles, had a hunting knife buried in his chest. Buried up to the hilt. What had done _that_?

Ryan gestured through the window to the injured man. "Who...what...attacked him?"

"The textbook answer is a creature from Japanese mythology called a _kitsune_ , but the first thing you have to understand, Ryan, is that our ancestors were a little overzealous when it came to characterizing the supernatural. With a few, very notable exceptions," he nodded his head in Ryan's direction, "most 'creatures' from world folklore were, and are, actually quite human."

Ryan wasn't sure he followed. Tom continued.

"In myth, the _kitsune_ was a fox, a trickster who could assume human form and cause mischief among villagers or play pranks on samurai. In reality however, the _kitsune_ is merely a human with certain psychic abilities: the ability to implant suggestion or mentally bend the will of another. Apart from a few sects of monks, the Japanese had no idea what was truly happening, so to them it made more sense to attribute their misfortunes to these mischievous animals. Psychic suggestion, in fact, is one of the more common abilities we've seen manifest, even throughout the ages. Anansi the Spider in West Africa, the coyote or raven in Native American culture, much to Daniel's chagrin." He smiled again, but it faded quickly into a cold, set jaw. "You've heard of Reynard, or Renart, the Fox?"

Ryan shook his head.

"He is a trickster character from French literature in the middle ages. As a matter of fact, the character was based on an actual trickster, a very gifted psychic, a lesser baron who used his powers to work his way into the position of duke. Nearly overthrew Louis VI, from what I'm told. Regardless, the man we know as Renart is a crime lord with similar gifts. He gave himself the name 'Renart' and has been employing his power to carve out his own section of the criminal underworld, though I'm not entirely sure he's even French. Evidently he's brought in a new lieutenant, this Mr. Ito, who also has the same psychic ability."

"Renart, this man, is everyone working for him a psychic?" Ryan asked.

Tom shook his head. "No, we wouldn't stand a chance. There are a great many people out there with paranormal abilities, but they're too spread out, and most of them too afraid or ignorant of what they truly are to come forward. The others are snatched up by people like Renart. Or, if we're very, very lucky, by us. But no, Renart employs mostly humans from what we know of his operation."

"Does he employ a man named Isaac?"

Tom's dim eyes darkened even further and they narrowed as he appraised Ryan with a critical stare. "What do you know about Isaac?"

"Nothing. But he approached me tonight, right outside, before I came in."

The ghost's eyes never left him, but the sudden apprehension in his face had vanished. "Isaac. Hm. I suppose it fits. What did you tell him?"

"I didn't tell him anything. I don't _know_ anything."

Tom nodded, pleased. "Make sure you tell Doc Webster that he spoke to you. We should have known they'd approach you, I'm sorry no one told you to expect it. Did he offer you something?"

"A job, more or less." Ryan said. "Though it didn't sound like I'd be wearing a tie to work..."

"And you refused?" Tom inquired.

Ryan nodded.

"Good. That makes me very happy, Ryan. That's a very good sign." He exhaled, or at least, it appeared that way. "To answer your question, no. Isaac does not work for Renart. Truthfully, Isaac doesn't 'work' for anyone. Closer to freelance. Recently, however, he's been working for a man called Anthony Hess. Well, at least that's what he's calling himself nowadays."

This was a name Ryan _did_ recognize, though at first he didn't believe it. Hess was one of the city's elite, a real-estate mogul who bought and sold city blocks over lunch every day of the week.

" _The_ Anthony Hess?" Ryan asked.

Tom's eyes narrowed once again. "Renart has carved out, perhaps thirty percent of this city's underworld. Ten percent is controlled and scrabbled over by your run-of-the-mill human criminals. Ten percent is fought over by less powerful or less organized supernatural criminals. Anthony Hess is the one man who controls absolutely everything else."

"And you're telling me that Anthony Hess, the shoe-in at the next mayoral election, is actually some underworld boss?"

Tom smiled a mirthless smile. "Hess doesn't _run_ the underworld, he _is_ the underworld. And he won't run for mayor, it's too public. He likes to be known, but he doesn't like drawing attention to himself. If Hess becomes mayor, people might start to take too close a look. They might start thinking that he looks a lot like Ivan Mills, the newspaper tycoon who ran most of Chicago during the 60's, or Henry Sutton, the energy magnate out of Philadelphia in the 40's."

"What are you saying?"

"Anthony Hess is all of those people. He's been collecting and trading power and wealth like baseball cards, and he's been doing it for decades: both above and below the table. Now, with the Internet, he's stuck as Anthony Hess. His face and name are out there, so he isn't able to pack up and move to a new city under a new identity. We're stuck with him."

"What is he?" Ryan asked. "I mean, how is it he's survived so long?"

"Hess is a vampire." Tom replied. "One of the few who can control the bloodlust enough to think straight, and that makes him even more dangerous."

Ryan's thoughts were interrupted by the metallic thuds of the two women coming down the stairs.

The older woman led the charge. She was at least a few years older than Tom appeared to be; Ryan guessed she was in her mid fifties. Her skin was creased, leathery, and deeply tanned. Although she carried only a bit more weight than most women her age, she appeared much larger than she was because of the sheer amount of clothing and accessories she wore. A massive collection of gaudy necklaces, bangles, and rings jangled in time as she made her way down the stairs. The jewelry was of all shapes and sizes, but featured mostly gems or polished stones threaded with leather or twine rather than any chains of gold or silver. Over this she wore a great brown, canvas duster that flapped behind her as she moved. It was a bizarre mishmash of clothing that seemed to give the impression of equal parts cowboy and gypsy.

Her hair was pulled back into a haphazard ponytail that did little to contain the wild frizz that seemed to stick out at odd angles. The hair itself was silvery gray with a few lingering streaks of dark, burnt red. Her face was creased and lined, but they were lines of laughter and smiles rather than struggle. Light brown eyes twinkled behind plump, rosy cheeks. At the moment her face was set in a scowl of determination, but it looked to Ryan as though this was one of the few times when she wasn't laughing jovially.

As she neared Ryan and the infirmary, he saw a small leather pouch clutched between her jeweled fingers and she rushed into the room before he could get a closer look.

Evelyn sidled up next to Tom and, much to Ryan's disappointment, said nothing. He mentally shook himself and tried to keep in mind that there were much more important events unfolding.

The older woman had entered the infirmary and set to work doing something Ryan couldn't see. They all waited breathlessly for some sign, any indication that things were going well. No one spoke.

Ryan watched as Dr. Webster moved around to the head of the gurney. The doctor closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he put his hands gently on the bleeding man's temples.

"What's he doing?" Ryan asked Tom, his voice hovering just above a whisper.

"Doctor Webster possesses a rather unique psychic gift: it's a type of mind control that allows him to send mental commands to a person's body." Tom replied. "He is instructing Miles' unconscious mind to stop the bleeding and heal its body at an accelerated rate. It doesn't always work as well as he needs it to, but without it Miles wouldn't stand a chance."

They watched in silence as the doctor stood over the young man, both of them as still and silent as sculpture. After a moment, Daniel and the older woman filed out to join Ryan and the others as they watched through the infirmary window.

"It's up to Robert now." The older woman said with a distinct Southern drawl.

Silence fell over them once again as the seconds ticked away.

Tom continued in a whisper. "He's too humble to have told you himself, but Doc Webster is the reason you're here too. The only people that don't die instantly from werewolf attacks are the ones that die five minutes later. The doctor healed you far more than you knew. His power is the only way anyone could have survived."

Ryan felt a great swell of gratitude, as well as a renewed, and very deep, respect. The silence returned and Ryan watched the unmoving figures in the room beyond, finding himself truly concerned for the well-being of the young man he had never met. Then Ryan's knees buckled.

In the chaos, Ryan had forgotten the one thing he knew he could never forget: tonight was the last night of the cycle. The beast was stirring, awakening in his chest and in mere moments it would be clawing its way out of him to wreak havoc and death on all those nearby. Ryan sprawled to the ground as he felt his stomach and internal organs contracting and shifting. He knew the pain, the unimaginable pain, would be next.

He was only dimly aware of what was happening around him. They had seen him collapse but only Daniel seemed to know what was happening and he rushed to get everyone back. Ryan screamed in his own head for them to run, to get out, or to kill him, but he couldn't vocalize any of it. When he felt his bones begin to lengthen and grow, when he felt the discomfort turn to unbearable agony, the only thing to come out of his mouth were the long, piercing screams.

The pain blurred his vision and shadow began to swirl together with light as he felt the beast's mind, the bloodlust of pure instinct, begin to poke and jostle for position with his fading human consciousness. A blurred shadow fell over him and what was left of the human Ryan felt a sharp prick in his neck. The momentary pain was nothing compared to what was happening to the rest of him, but it registered in his brain all the same. It was a threat, an enemy, an attack. It was a challenge for dominance that he would answer in blood. Long, wicked fangs grew in his snout and he released a fierce snarl, a challenge back to his attacker. Then everything went black.

### Chapter 12

Once again, Ryan found himself stirring awake in a bed that was not his own. This particular bedroom however, was far different from his or Vanessa's or the hospital room. It was small and dark and there were no clothes strewn about, no bookshelves or posters or décor of any kind. There was the bed, there was a small, bare desk with only a lamp and a laptop, and there was a girl asleep in a chair, cradling a sleek, silver nine-millimeter handgun.

She was even more dazzling up close. The low light in the windowless room cast a soft glow across her cheeks and the shadows that played about her face danced as her head rose and fell with every breath. Ryan had been to the Grand Canyon. He had seen the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Rockies, and the Redwoods but he could not remember enjoying the sight of anything quite so much as he did this girl's face. He had seen beauty, but he had never seen this. Ryan felt as if he could stay in this room and look at this girl forever, and he felt that there were much, much worse ways to spend eternity.

He managed to tear his eyes away from Evelyn long enough to notice that he was not wearing pants. His boxers were all that had survived his most recent transformation. To make matters worse, he was laying on top of the bedclothes rather than beneath them. Ryan reached for the blanket to cover himself up and a spring creaked in the old bed.

Faster than his eye could follow, Evelyn was awake and he was no longer gazing at her perfect face. Suddenly he was staring down the barrel of the gun, which she held with surgical steadiness mere centimeters from his eyeball.

For a long moment, they froze. She kept the gun on him, not moving or wavering an inch, before she finally spoke through gritted teeth.

"What time is it?"

Ryan hadn't moved either, for fear of losing a head, and he was having a hard time not staring at the gun. "Where exactly do you think I'm hiding a watch?"

She kept her eyes and the gun trained on him as she reached into her jeans pocket to produce a cell phone. She looked at it, then at him, then lowered the gun.

"It's morning. I guess we're good."

Ryan exhaled for the first time in what seemed like minutes.

"Sorry." She continued. "None of us really knows just quite how to handle you yet. Daniel is the only one with any real experience."

"Don't worry about it. It's probably for the best." Ryan said as he tried to slow his racing heartbeat. "And frankly, that's not the worst first interaction I've ever had with a girl."

For the first time, Ryan saw Evelyn smile, and it was unlike anything he'd ever before experienced. It was as if fireworks made of melted butter had exploded in his chest and were running down his insides. It took every last ounce of his mental and physical power to keep himself from grinning like an idiot.

"Well don't take it personally." She replied. "To be honest, you're not the first boy I've tried to shoot after waking up next to him."

It was Ryan's turn to smile now. It occurred to him then however, that he wasn't exactly sure just how serious she was being.

"I'm Evelyn." She said as she extended her hand.

"Ryan." He said, and he felt a hot surge of electric excitement run up his arm as they touched.

"What happened last night?" He asked.

"Bill Bixby left the building and we got a visit from Lou Ferrigno." Evelyn stood up, stretched, and reached behind her to tuck the long silver gun into the waistband of her jeans.

Beauty, brains, and references to classic television. Ryan's head was about to explode.

"I didn't hurt anyone, did I?"

Evelyn chuckled. "We can handle ourselves. Though we did luck out with the sedative working twice in a row. Doctor Webster wasn't sure."

"Don't suppose it'll work again next month?" Ryan ventured

"Not really my area." She replied with a shrug. "Doc Webster doesn't think it will, but like I said: we're flying blind. We'll know more when Ben gets here."

Ryan was curious to know more about what had happened, and who Ben was, but he was more curious about Evelyn. About everything about her.

"Are we still in the warehouse?"

She nodded. "This is my room. It took everybody we had to carry you up here, but Daniel figured it was safer than putting you in one of the bunks. At least this way if you woke up in the middle of the night, you'd be trapped."

"But you'd have been trapped in here with me."

Evelyn shrugged again. "Somebody had to watch you, and Daniel'd barely fit in this place, much less have room to maneuver. I could shoot you in the head as easily as he could. Do it with more style, too."

"Does everybody live in the warehouse?"

She shook her head. "The doc was a better man than any of my foster parents, so when I met him, I moved in. Everybody else has their own place."

Ryan nodded and an uncomfortable silence fell.

"He wanted to talk to you, when you were up." Evelyn said. "Doctor Webster. There are some clothes in the cabinet outside. Grab whatever fits."

Ryan nodded. He stood up and tried to smooth out some of the wrinkles he had left in the bedspread. "Thanks." He said quietly. "For this, that," he gestured to the gun "...everything."

Their bodies were feet away from each other, but Ryan thought he could feel the pounding, radiating heat between them. They locked eyes and Evelyn said, after a moment, "Sure."

Ryan left the room and tried to clear his head. He was on the second floor of the warehouse and sunlight streamed through the windows and skylights. Nearest him he saw two sets of barracks-style bunk beds, tucked and smoothed with military precision. Beyond the beds Ryan saw a small row of mismatched cabinets and armoires, and that's where he headed.

He pulled open one of the drawers and found a stack of freshly laundered white t-shirts. The drawer below that held sweatpants and a few hooded sweatshirts. Ryan took one of each, dressed, and fought the urge to explore the other cabinets. He prayed that his shoes were still lying around somewhere on the ground floor and that they hadn't been ripped to shreds during the transformation like everything else he owned.

Past the cabinets and drawers Ryan saw a small collection of gym equipment that looked decades old. There were no pulleys, no weight stacks, no fancy, single-purpose machines. There were bars, there were weights, there were dumbbells, and there was a bench.

He decided against exploring any further until he had a better idea of what this place was and, more importantly, how he fit into all of it. Ryan made his way back to the staircase and found the plump gray-haired woman and the fair-haired man sitting in the central lounge area on the ground floor.

"Well well well!" The man said affably in a thick Irish accent. "Look who made it back to the land o' the livin'!"

He was in his early twenties, Ryan guessed, with a rough stubble that put him at least a few years out of high school.

"You don't look too bad yourself." Ryan replied.

"Ah yeah, well. Apologies fer not bein' in a fit state to greet you last night. Bit of heartburn got me under the weather." He smiled and winked.

He was thin, but not scrawny; the lean-muscle equivalent to Daniel's bulk. His blonde hair was far lighter than Ryan's and fell down well past the bottoms of his ears. His eyes were small, almost beady, and watery blue. They held a slight mischievous glint and gave the rest of his face the appearance of being in a perpetually sly smile.

He continued. "Name's Michael Molony, but you should call me Miles. Everyone does, even me mum. And this, radiant creature here is Ruby, but she's a mite busy."

The older woman was making careful measurements of dark-colored powders out of, and into, different vials and sacks. "Never too busy to flirt with you, Miles." Ruby replied in her Southern drawl. "How did you sleep, sugar? Come have a seat." She motioned for Ryan to sit, which he did.

"It's great to meet both of you. I slept...well, I don't remember most of it so I guess that's good."

Ruby was delicately measuring out ingredients and didn't reply. Miles, however, never broke stride. "Feel free ter sock me one if I'm out of line here mate, but I gotta ask: what's it like? The changin' and tranformin' and what have yeh?"

Ryan thought for a moment. "It hurts like hell."

"Aye...I can imagine. You gotta forgive me fer bein' so nosy. It's just that werewolves...don't see them much. Ben doesn't talk about that stuff."

"This Ben guy, he's a werewolf?" Ryan asked. His heart leapt at the possibility of meeting another werewolf. A hundred questions flashed through his mind at once.

Ruby looked up and smiled. "Well he certainly wouldn't be travelling halfway across the country to see you if he wasn't. Just don't let Old Ben push you around; he's really just a teddy bear."

"Does he...or, do you...know the one that attacked me? The one that turned me?"

Ruby and Miles exchanged a glance and it was a moment before either of them spoke.

"Him we're a little _too_ familiar with." Miles responded. "Definitely not a teddy bear that one, if you catch my meaning."

"Tell me." Ryan said.

"Name is Grayle. Aaron Grayle. Until a month ago he was the only werewolf fer three states, and he liked it that way. From what we've heard, he's none too happy that you survived." Miles finished darkly. "He was a monster, a true _monster_ before. But now...now Doc's sayin' it's gonna be a right trail o' carnage 'til he finds you."

"He's coming after me?"

"Don't fret. You've got some time yet. We spent most of last night piecing it all together. Isaac'll have told 'em you're alive and with us, but Grayle won't make a move. Not yet."

"How can you be sure? If he knows who I am, he's going to come after my family, my friends!"

"Eventually, yes." Ruby said in a voice that did nothing to calm Ryan. "But not yet. He'll come after you first, and only if he can't get to you will your family be in any danger. But you don't need to worry about any of that right now, child. Grayle works for Anthony Hess, and Hess has been moving pieces around the board for a while now. Something big is coming soon and he won't let Grayle jeopardize his operation like that. Not yet. You've got to trust us that we've got it sussed out."

Ryan exhaled and tried to slow his heartbeat. He didn't trust them. He didn't _know_ them. He couldn't just take their word that his family and friends were safe from a murderous werewolf.

"Why?" Ryan asked after taking a number of deep breaths. "Why is he coming after me at all?

Ruby tried to calm him. "You have to understand Ryan, this is a man, a thing, who kills for sport. Don't forget, he tried to kill you just cause you was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He don't need much of a reason. Still, he thinks he's got one: it's like Miles said, Grayle's been the only werewolf in the area for years. That's cause anybody he's bit, he's killed. He was out hunting animals in the woods that night, and he stumbled 'pon you. Better sport. Never intended to let you live, though. Another werewolf in the city is an encroachment on his territory, not to mention the only thing for a few hundred miles that could pose a threat to him. He's an animal, Ryan. That means you can't be asking 'why', you gotta be asking 'when'."

Ten minutes ago, the world had seemed a much simpler place to Ryan, even despite the madness of the last few days.

Ruby gave him a moment before she continued. When she did, her voice was soft and she placed a hand on his knee. "Ryan, it'll be alright. You're not alone, you're here with us now. And believe you me, we've handled much bigger things than one little old werewolf."

Her words didn't comfort him much, but it was enough. He still didn't know what this place was or who these people were, but they clearly knew more than he did, and he knew he stood a much better chance of protecting his family with these people at his side. Even so, he wanted to know just who would be looking after the survival of his family and friends.

"What are you guys?" Ryan asked. "I mean, what can you-"

"Oh, I've been known to read a mind now an' again." Miles said with a wink. "Aw don't worry, me powers only work on people who don't have other powers. Human minds only. I tell yeh, killer with the ladies though." He smiled. "An' Ruby here is the best sorceress, enchantress, witch, whatever you want to call it, this side of the Mississippi."

"Miles, you ol' silver tongue..."

"And you're going to risk your lives to protect me for...what? Kicks? Who are you people?"

Miles eyed him for a moment before speaking, and as he did his eyes flashed and his face broke into a wry smile. "Remember when you were a child, all those things that terrified you? All those things under the bed? In yer closet? All those things that go 'bump' in the night?" He sat back in his chair. "We're the ones that have gotten tired of the ruckus."

Ryan heard the garage door's metallic scrape and a moment later, Dr. Webster entered through the large double doors at the end of the building.

"Ryan, you're awake. Good. I think I owe you some explanations."

***

Gray water lapped at the edge of the high rocky divide that separated sea from shore. It was an industrial pier and not much to look at, but the wide stretch of harbor before them was glassy and serene, and the irregular spires of the downtown skyscrapers across the way glinted orange in the light of the breaking morning.

Days with cloudless blue skies were few and far between this time of year, but today was one of them. The corporate superstructures stood clumped together in the middle of downtown like blue and gray suited businessmen sharing a whispered conversation about the latest high-powered merger and how it would affect the quarterlies. The rest of the city sprawled out around them in a haphazard grid: the industrial sector, the historic district, Chinatown. They were all parts of a whole that had been interwoven this way, in one form or another, for more than a century.

When the sun shined as it did today and the high-rises shimmered with an intangible fire, it was enough to make some people forget about the parts of the city that the sun never reached: the alleyways and bus stops and train yards, the graffiti-covered walls of the abandoned auto-body shops, the leafless trees planted outside crumbling tenements.

Ryan had always loved the city: from its cloud-touching heights to its dank, forgotten lows. He had lived here his entire life and there was no place he'd have rather grown up. He had always felt a connection, a camaraderie, to its other citizens, from the investment bankers to the indigent. Now however, all that had changed. The city looked the same, the streets were still familiar, but Ryan felt as though he had been cast out, as though he was no longer a member of the teeming masses, that he was exiled from the rest of humankind.

It was a chilly morning, despite the sun. Mist hung unmoving in the air like flapping curtains suddenly frozen in time. Ryan's borrowed sweatshirt was warmer than it had looked, and for that he was thankful. He had also managed to find his shoes on the way out; flung to opposite ends of the building when he had transformed. They were mostly intact, but his socks had not fared so well. Feeling was quickly leaving his toes.

There was nowhere to sit in the space behind the warehouse, just asphalt, gravel, and a few untended patches of scruffy grass, but Ryan wouldn't have been able to sit even if he could. He was too anxious, too nervous, too intent on hearing absolutely everything the psychic doctor had to say.

"What do you think?" The man asked. "Of the place, I mean. The people, the operation..."

"I think I don't know what to think."

Webster stared out into the harbor. "That's probably fair. Are you at least ready to hazard a guess?"

"A guess at what?"

"At why there's a warehouse on the waterfront filled with people and things that are living, breathing exceptions to all the rules of science."

"I have no idea."

"Survival, Ryan. And not because of what's out there, but because of what's in here." He put a hand to his chest. "Banding together like this, it's the only way we stand a chance of remaining true to our...better selves. This is the only way we can suppress our destructive appetites, our true natures."

"I don't follow."

Dr. Webster turned his gaze from the ocean and looked at him. "Ryan, do you know why people like us; psychics, werewolves, sorcerers, vampires, why history has always painted us as villains? As murderers and kidnappers and tricksters? As evil men?"

Ryan shook his head.

"Because we _are_. We may not all be human anymore, but we are still subject to the confines of human nature. Power, Ryan, even in the slightest degree, can twist the human mind into something terrible, unrecognizable. People that are born with such incredible power, or come upon it later in life, we almost inevitably become corrupted. You of all people can understand that. The wolf is a manifestation of that corruption: the darkest corners of bestial savagery and human lusts brought out in monstrous physical form. For some of us the distinction between good and evil is much less obvious.

"The people in that warehouse are the ones who are determined to keep their power from corrupting them, from using their power to steal or hurt or kill or to gain more power. We do that by supporting each other. Even so, we're all each of us on the razor's edge: we're alcoholics that wake up every morning with a fresh bottle on the nightstand. We carry around the keys to our own damnation and we have to fight those urges every day. It'd be the easiest thing in the world to reach out and give in, but we've made the decision not to."

"You mean none of you use your powers?"

Webster shook his head. "That's not an option. You'll soon find Ryan, that your powers become a part of you like an arm or a leg. You can't just _not_ use them. What we do is try to redirect our human urges and use our powers in the least selfish ways possible. The moment we use our powers for personal gain, the moment we allow ourselves just one exception, that's the moment we step over the precipice. The deck is _always_ stacked against us, that's why none of us can do it alone."

"So why do what you do? If all you're worried about is some kind of salvation, why bother to fight people like Renart at all? Why not just sit in the warehouse and sing 'Kumbaya'? Fewer knives in the chest that way, I'd imagine..."

The doctor smiled. "They may not have a box for us on the census, but this is still our city. I don't want it in the hands of Renart or Hess, do you? I know, we know, better than anyone, what men like that are capable of. We fight because if we don't, there is absolutely nothing to stop them. The police can't fight what they don't even know about. These people grow bolder and more ambitious every day, and it is only a matter of time before they decide to come out of the shadows. And when that happens, I am not going to leave this city and its people defenseless. We fight because someone has to, and against an enemy like this, we are the only ones who can."

Ryan had become uneasy, as grotesque images of Frank Spalding swam through his head. "But using violence to stop violence, isn't that...I don't know...counterproductive? Doesn't that put you in danger of going over the edge? All the fighting?"

The doctor's eyes darkened and his countenance took on a completely different hue. His mouth formed into the thin line of a scowl, and Ryan saw none of the movie-star handsomeness that had been there only seconds before.

"Do you know of a better way?" He asked sharply. "There are things out there right now that are trying to carve up every bit of this city for their own. Of course violence is a last resort, but sometimes it's the only way. Every one of us has done things...made sacrifices...all for the good of this city. Ask Ruby what happened to her last husband. Ask Miles who it is that's buried in an unmarked plot in the corner of Greenhaven. Ask Mrs. White how many people she's seen come through that door on their own two feet only to leave in a bag on a four-wheeled stretcher. Ask Tom how many of our brothers-in-arms, our friends, have fallen off the wagon and now work for Hess or Renart. Today there are six of us, tomorrow there could be three, or none. I can't tell you how many we've lost because I myself have lost count." His eyes had slipped out of focus and his voice had dropped to just above a whisper. "Too many sacrifices for us to just lie down and call it quits."

Ryan watched him for a moment, hesitant to respond.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." but then Ryan's voice trailed off as he watched the color return to Webster's face, the light return to his eyes. In another instant, the movie-star smile had returned.

"Of course not." The doctor said warmly. "And you'll have to forgive me. We've all been through a great deal. Things like that...it's exactly what I've been saying: we have to stick together."

Ryan had been holding out hope that there was some cure or fix or solution for the werewolf, but he wondered now: what if there wasn't? What if he was expected to live the rest of his life with bars on his windows and chains in his basement? If college, a family, a normal life was once again completely out of the question, could he handle it? Ryan wasn't sure he'd have the strength and, if he did, how long that strength would last. He wondered if there would come a time when he got fed up with fighting it and allowed the wolf to roam freely every month, hunting and killing as it pleased. Ryan shuddered at the thought, but he knew it was always a possibility: he could still feel the wolf in his head, even now. If these people could help him, if they could stand by him and make sure he never got apathetic, maybe he could manage.

Even so, Ryan knew that getting involved in something as massive and dangerous as this wasn't a perfect solution either. He knew that he too would have to deal with his human, power-hungry nature, but he certainly wasn't convinced this was the way to do it. A support network of other people made sense to Ryan. Using that network to fight business tycoon vampires made less sense.

The more Ryan thought about it, the more he came to the conclusion that this wasn't his fight. He didn't want a vampire running the city or psychics on the loose committing crimes, but he and his family and friends had lived for years without knowing or worrying about vampires or werewolves or ghosts. Apart from the target Grayle had painted on his back, Ryan wasn't sure why he would involve himself now. He wasn't thrilled by the idea of jumping headlong into a war and even then, he wasn't sure how much it would help him.

To Ryan, it didn't seem like they needed him either. They had muscle and firepower and finesse, and it would all run much more smoothly without the milk-toast suburban werewolf bumbling around trying to learn the ropes. Ryan was just as likely to get someone else killed as he was himself.

And just that quickly, it was settled. Ryan had made up his mind: thanks but no thanks. He was having a hard enough time surviving high school, he'd knew he'd never make it through a war.

"Look, I'm glad that there are people out there, looking out for the rest of us like this, but that's not me. I can't shoot a gun, I don't have any skills or experience, even my power is just one big liability."

Webster gave Ryan an appraising look. "I'm not trying to enlist you, Ryan, I'm trying to help you. You can do whatever you want, we're not going to twist your arm one way or the other. Fact is, we needed to bring you in regardless. Once a person discovers or obtains their powers, we only have so much time to contact them before their abilities take over. Once we do talk to them and explain things, people become much less dangerous. If we don't, however..."

"What do you mean?"

Dr. Webster's gaze fell to the ground, then back out to the sea. "What I'm saying is-" He paused, unsure of his words. "Maybe this is a better way to explain it: a few years ago, we caught wind of a girl, a little older than you. From what we've learned since, we know that she had some latent psychic ability, mind reading, like Miles. School or life or something started to get difficult, so she started to become more introverted, to spend more time indoors, alone. The isolation, it made her subconscious mind more eager to reach out to the people around her. Soon, hearing people's thoughts became as easy for Melody Richman as hearing them speak."

The name sounded familiar to Ryan, but he couldn't place it. It was a name his mind had filed away at some point for future reference, but the knowledge had never been needed again so it had lost all context in Ryan's brain. The doctor continued.

"Of course, she began to hone it, to concentrate. After a while, Melody got to the point where she could not only hear and sense another person's present thoughts, but even delve into their memories. When she began exploring that path, it was never...she never had a chance. Melody Richman became privy to every skeleton in every closet: every secret, every lie, every by-the-hour motel, every exchange of goods or services beneath every freeway overpass. All the desperation and depravity of the human experience was open to her, and when you see those things, those unspeakable acts written all over the faces of your politicians, your grocers, your mechanics...your parents...the line between right and wrong isn't blurred, it's obliterated.

"Melody Richman saw the mortal sins of every person she passed on the street, and she saw so much evil that she no longer noticed any of the good. Human beings weren't designed for omniscience, and Melody had to watch as every moral truth she had ever learned in Sunday School was desecrated. Truth, Chastity, Kindness, Justice: they were the rules that had shaped her world, and her faith in them was shattered."

"Where were you guys during all of this?" Ryan demanded.

Doc sighed. "We just...we didn't know. Usually when powers first come into play, it makes some kind of a splash. The psychics feel it or somebody gets hurt so I see them at the hospital or we hear about it on the news. Melody though, she just seethed. She saw everything, but she never did anything. Just seethed.

"Eventually of course, something had to give. In Melody's mind, all the rules of human morality had been exposed as lies. Eventually all that information, all those terrible things she had seen, it came to a head. To this day, we don't know if Melody knew of something sinister going on at the church's youth center or if it was just madness, but the bombing was the culmination of all that."

There had been an explosion, years ago, at an after-school center in one of the lower-income parts of town. Ryan remembered the media frenzy that had surrounded it: three killed, dozens of children left with severe burns, no suspects. The police had never officially called it a bombing, but that was the popular theory at the time. It was a black mark on the city's history, and the kind of thing that people wished they could forget.

"That was her? I thought they never made any arrests."

Webster shook his head then looked at Ryan with darkened eyes. "They didn't. They didn't have time. The youth center was sponsored by the neighborhood church, and the church's congregation included every high-ranking member of the O'Dwyer crime syndicate. They don't take lightly to people leaving their children with third degree burns, even if the guilty party was an unstable teenage girl. We still don't know how they found out who had done it, but we do know that Melody was at the bottom of the lake before the police were even done taking witness statements. Nobody linked the bombing with the body of a girl in a lake because nobody knew. Nobody but the people who had put her there...and us."

The final piece clicked into place. That was where Ryan remembered hearing the name before. Around the same time as the bombing, the body of a young girl named Melody Richman had been pulled out of a nearby lake. The murder was overshadowed by the press coverage of the youth center incident, but it got more attention than most of the city's other murders simply because the two events happened so close together. The media had called it a "crime spree", although they'd had no idea that the two crimes were related. Until now, neither had Ryan.

"Why tell me this?" Ryan asked.

Doc shrugged. "It's the best way to illustrate what I'm talking about. And I think you deserve to know what can happen when people like us try to go out on our own, what we're up against when we go toe-to-toe with our human natures. Melody Richman is a dramatic example to be sure, but I want you to understand the razor's edge that we walk every day."

"But Melody didn't go crazy with power, she just went...crazy."

"Even crazy, she killed three people. Imagine what she might have done if she had _liked_ the terrible memories and thoughts she could see. It's a cautionary tale, Ryan, about the edge. These powers can do wonderful, incredible things, or they can destroy you and everyone around you."

"Daniel said I could try to deal with it on my own. He said I could chain myself up and live a normal life"

The doctor nodded. "It is possible. I'm just trying to explain your options...and the stakes you're facing."

"So this is still a pitch to get me to join the A-Team."

Doc smiled. "Let's see where you're at after you talk to Ben. He's got a little different view of things, maybe he can convince you."

The doctor's words were starting to hit their mark. For Ryan, the thought of being able to do some actual good, to strike back in a very real sense for Truth, Justice, and the American Way against people who were using their powers for evil...it was an attractive, exciting concept. Staying alive long enough to see his eighteenth birthday however, was also appealing.

Ryan was torn, but he decided to take Webster's advice and hear what Ben had to say. He was almost certain of what he wanted to do, but if he had to talk to Ben about being a werewolf anyway, Ryan figured it couldn't hurt to hear one last pitch.

### Chapter 13

School had never been fun, or in Ryan's estimation, perfectly safe, but the following Monday was different. His teachers were insisting upon the importance of things like chemistry and history. Ryan's mind however, was much too full; occupied with thoughts of an underground war being waged between armies that wielded incredible power. He thought about how the fate of a city, of millions of lives, might rest on the actions of six people in a ramshackle warehouse. Ryan was all too aware that sometime in the near future, he might decide to bear that burden as well. He looked at every face he passed in the halls and felt his stomach drop a little lower: whether that person lived or died might someday depend solely on Ryan's actions. He had already thrown up twice that morning.

In fact, from the moment he woke up the next day, Ryan had been dead set on calling Dr. Webster and backing out of the whole thing. He didn't want to go back to the warehouse, he didn't want to meet with someone named Ben. All Ryan wanted was to go back to his normal life, before the wolf. He didn't want to have to decide whether to make himself accountable for every soul in his history class.

As the day wore on, Ryan became more and more certain that he could never go back. What had happened, had happened. He knew he couldn't get out of it and he couldn't change it. What he could do was learn more about it. That meant he had to go back to the warehouse, to face the truth that he was a werewolf, and to learn all he could from another of his kind.

He had left the warehouse soon after his discussion with Dr. Webster. Ryan had gone straight home and told all the lies and made all the excuses, and it struck him that this was what his life was about to become: whether he ever went back to the warehouse or not, he would never again be the person he was. He had inherited another life, and it was one he would have to keep steeped in shadow and secrecy. Ryan could never be completely honest with his parents ever again, and it saddened him.

He had also had to tell some pre-planned lies. Ryan was headed back to the warehouse right after school: Ben would be arriving today, and Ryan didn't want to put off getting answers any longer than he had to.

Now it was just a matter of getting through the next few classes and, more importantly, dodging Vanessa. He knew that she would want to know everything that had happened, and that wasn't a conversation Ryan was quite ready to have. He was still processing everything and trying to deal with the world as he knew it being shattered into a thousand pieces of crazy. To make matters worse, Ryan still had no idea what he was going to do about any of it. Mostly however, Ryan didn't want to open up.

Vanessa had seen Ryan at the lowest point in his life, and that thought brought a sick feeling to his stomach every time it crossed his mind. Ryan hated showing weakness in front of the people close to him, nothing made him more uncomfortable, but the weakness had been thrust upon him. She had been there when he needed her most and for that he was thankful, but Ryan still wished he had never needed Vanessa at all. He liked to think he was self-sufficient, and he liked for other people to see him that way. There were enough emotions, enough hand-wringing drama in high school as it was, and Ryan prided himself on being above all of that. Vanessa however, had seen the façade crumble and that bothered him. He didn't want to crumble in front of her ever again, but his mind was so strained, his thoughts and feelings in such a whirlwind, that he knew he'd never be able to maintain composure if he started opening up to her.

He had texted her when he first got home to let her know he was okay. Her texts and calls that had followed had gone unanswered. He knew she'd be furious, but for the way Ryan figured he needed to play it, he knew that was going to be an unavoidable cost of doing business. The way he saw it, Ryan had to get his head on straight: his world was changing in ways he could never have imagined and now was not the time to let Vanessa try to exorcise his inner demons.

He almost made it, too. Ryan rushed from class to class and spent as little time in the halls as possible. He skipped the classes he had with his friends and thought he was home free. She cornered him, however, coming out of the bathroom before the last period of the day.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" She demanded.

Ryan felt his shoulder blades smack up against the cold brick of the school hallway. Vanessa's face was inches from his and seething. They got a few looks from passersby but as soon as they saw Vanessa, they understood. Anyone that knew Vanessa knew that logic rarely wormed its way into her thinking when this kind of fire blazed behind her eyes. Emotion was running the show. Everyone else was just glad it wasn't directed at them. Ryan was not so lucky.

"Look, V..." He began.

"Huh uh." Vanessa interrupted. "You don't get to talk. It was a rhetorical question. One text? One text?! You're smack in the middle of more crazy than we ever knew existed and I get one text?" Her voice dropped to just above a whisper, but lost none of its edge. "What about Saturday night? Did you turn again? Did something else happen? Are you okay? You'd better be, because I'm going to give you the single biggest beating you've ever-"

Ryan grasped her by the arms and spun Vanessa around. He tried to push himself up to his full height as he stared her down. Vanessa stared right back, unflinching.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Ryan began. "I know you were worried and I'm sorry I've been avoiding you, but I need you to trust me: I've got this. I promise I'm going to tell you absolutely everything, but not today. I met some people, and I think they want to help, but-"

She had pursed her lips in a way that made Ryan cut his sentence short, but she didn't speak. She looked Ryan straight in the eye as their heartbeats slowed and her breathing steadied. Finally, she spoke.

"You're going to give me the 'I need to figure things out' speech? You really think that'll fly with me? You don't get to figure things out on your own any more, Ryan. Not when your life is at stake. You don't get to be Mr. Macho this time. This is serious, dammit."

"You think I don't know that? You think I don't know the kind of crap I've stepped in? The address was a warehouse down by the waterfront. There are people there that can help." He said.

"There's a person _here_ who can help!" Her voice rose again in frustration.

"You've done more than enough." Ryan said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Well that doesn't mean my job is over. Just because you've got some crazy mythical curse, just because you've found other people like you, that means you and I just stop being friends? That means I stop caring about you? It stops being my job to help you?"

"That was never your job!" Ryan spat, unable to control his voice any longer.

"Like hell..." Vanessa muttered.

"I never asked you to critique my every move!"

Her voice fell to a whisper. "No, you just asked me to kill you."

She hadn't yelled it, she hadn't injected it with the slightest hint of venom. She said it softly and almost to herself in a lifeless tone that stung Ryan even more than if she had shouted.

It was something he hadn't fully considered before. Ryan had been so caught up in his own life, in the way all these things were affecting him, that he hadn't given the slightest thought to how they might be affecting everyone else.

Vanessa's emotional recovery had been too easy and Ryan knew he should have seen this coming. She hadn't once brought up what happened that morning at her house, she had let him do his thing and bury it, avoid it, no matter how much it was eating away at her. Now Ryan knew she had just been putting on a brave face for his benefit. He felt a surge of gratitude because that bravery was what had gotten him out of the car in the first place. It was what led them to the alley. It was what pushed him to the warehouse. He was where he was because of her. He owed her everything.

"I'm sorry." He said quietly.

"You don't have to be sorry." She replied. "You just have to realize that I'm in this now, whatever it is. I know how much you want to shut me out but you can't."

Ryan nodded. "I'm headed back to the warehouse today to meet with another werewolf who is coming in from another city. From what I can tell, he's just about the only good werewolf there is. I'm hoping he can help, but I'm not sure how."

"When is he supposed to get here?"

"He should already be in town."

"Well then you'd better get going."

Ryan was puzzled. "I thought you wanted to know everything?"

"I do. But you don't have time for that right now. You have bigger fish to fry and I get that. So go."

Ryan had never been close friends with very many women, but he knew if they were all as confusing as this one, he was in trouble.

***

Ryan's heart was pounding in his chest as he pulled up to the warehouse at 4197 Mockingbird, but not because the building was full of monsters or because he was about to meet the first werewolf since the one that had tried to kill him. Instead, his face was flushed and the blood roared in his ears because somewhere inside that building was Evelyn. He had been thinking about her almost constantly since he had left the warehouse and the prospect of seeing her again made his knees weak.

He had replayed the conversation with Vanessa over in his head throughout the drive. Ryan wasn't proud of the way he had handled anything in the last few days, but everything had somehow managed to turn out alright. He was happy with where he had left things with Vanessa, but he now added her to his mental list of things he needed to make up for. As he pulled up to the curb in front of 4197 he tried to put those thoughts out of his mind. Now more than ever, he knew he needed to focus.

The clouds had broken and pale yellow sunlight shone through onto the wet, splotchy asphalt. The breeze off the sea stung his nose and cheeks, but the day itself was unseasonably warm. The wind whipped up the collar of his jacket, but died down as he made his way from the Cherokee to the warehouse door.

Mrs. White didn't look up as he entered, nor did she respond to his hesitant greeting. Instead, she punched a button and a loud clank sounded within the heavy steel door. The aging woman flipped a page on her paperback and released the hammer on the shotgun.

### Chapter 14

The warehouse seemed almost empty. None of the lamps were on, and the sunlight that filtered through the upper windows reached the ground floor only in hazy patches. The area was dim and foreboding, but Ryan saw the hulking form of Daniel by the far wall and he headed that way.

The man was shadowboxing in some strange form of martial art. It wasn't graceful or flowery but to Ryan it looked brutally efficient. Daniel stood on a broad mat, fifteen feet square. Ryan had seen this area the night before, but he hadn't paid it much attention. He could tell now that it was a large sparring mat made of tightly woven straw, or something close to straw. There were long, thin wooden slats of a darker color that ran the length of the mat to keep the straw in place. Daniel's feet danced and pivoted on the dojo mat as if he were barely touching it at all.

"You've returned." The man said without breaking stride or even looking at Ryan. "I had my doubts."

"Where is everyone?" Ryan asked as he tried to track Daniel's lightning-fast movements.

"I could not say." Daniel replied. "Though it is my understanding that there is no operation tonight, so some might not return for days. I think the doctor was supposed to be here, but I have not seen him."

Ryan's heart sank a bit as he wondered where Evelyn might be, or worse, who she might be with. He watched Daniel for a few moments as the man moved forward and back with deadly precision, striking a hundred invisible opponents attacking from all sides. "Will you teach me that?"

Daniel smiled, but still did not stop. "This is a _kata_ , and I do not think it would do you much good."

"What do you mean?"

"It is designed to be performed by a human. To teach and enforce skills for humans to use in combat. If you decide to join us in combat, you will not be human. The wolf is a far more formidable foe than any man. You would be foolish not to use it."

"You're saying I'd be transformed? Doesn't that mean I could only help fight on full moons? And how am I supposed to make the wolf fight the bad guys and not you guys?"

Daniel simply smiled. "These are questions better answered by the expert." He nodded to the far stairs that led to Evelyn's bedroom. "Upstairs, against this wall, there is a ladder to the roof. Ben is waiting for you."

The number of questions burning in Ryan's mind had doubled. He made his way up the stairs then climbed the clanging metal ladder welded to the wall. He pushed open the steel trap door which gave way with a loud screech and he found himself almost blinded by sunlight.

The roof wasn't much to look at: flat and covered in gravel, only interrupted by the occasional skylight that protruded up from beneath. The view from the roof however, was quite different. Ryan wasn't more than a few stories above the ground but he felt as if he could see the entire harbor and most of the downtown area that sat on the other side. Sunlight danced upon the ocean which glittered blue-gray and gave a smoky, trembling reflection of the buildings on the shores. The man called Ben, however, was faced the opposite way: away from the ocean and the city and the view, and instead towards the grimy industrial sprawl in which 4197 was located.

He was sitting cross-legged at the other end of the rooftop, but even from here Ryan could see that he was powerfully built. The teenager made his way across the roof, his shoes scraping against the gravel and his curiosity burning. Ben was shirtless and although the weather was pleasant for this time of year, it was hardly tanning season.

The muscles in the man's back rippled as he breathed in and out, and each breath seemed to go on forever. He was deeply tanned, with the leathery skin of a man who had worked outside for most of his life. He was bald-headed, but as Ryan got closer he saw that the man also wore a short, ivory-white beard. His bushy eyebrows were the same milky color and stood in stark contrast to the brown skin around them. He wore white cotton pants that flapped around his ankles when the breeze picked up, but Ben himself sat completely still.

Ryan had reached the man, but neither had said anything. He saw now that Ben was much older than he looked from afar, perhaps in his mid fifties, but he looked to be in better health than most of the thirty year olds Ryan had seen. The man's muscles were not the perfectly toned, bulging arms and chest like Daniel's, in fact the skin hung loosely in some places, but his frame was large nonetheless. Ben looked like the sort of man that had never set foot in a gym, but instead had earned his body through nothing but hard labor.

Ryan opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it when he noticed Ben's closed eyes. He hadn't moved an inch since Ryan had climbed on to the roof, and Ryan wondered if the man was actually asleep.

He stood there, awkwardly, in silence. Ryan was about to turn on his heel and creep back to the trap door when the man spoke. His voice was powerful, but not demanding. His tone was even and matter-of-fact, which startled Ryan even more when he heard what Ben had to say.

"I want you to give me a reason, just one, single reason why I should not kill you here and now." He hadn't opened his eyes, he had not moved a muscle.

Ryan regarded the man for a moment, chewing his lip. "You know, you would make one hell of a guidance counselor..."

Only then did Ryan see the gun laid at the man's feet. Ryan had been so intent on studying Ben's face, he hadn't even noticed the black, no-nonsense semi-automatic that rested on the gravel. Now however, Ryan was taking careful notice of it.

"You are a monster." Ben replied, ignoring Ryan's quip. "You are a danger to yourself and especially to those around you. For three nights of every month, you embody Death. You have already killed one man, why should I allow you to kill again? Why should you be allowed to live?"

"Because if I die, the secret banana bread recipe goes with me." Ryan was beginning to feel agitated. "I'm sorry, I thought you were here to talk to me about being a werewolf."

"That is what we are talking about. I am asking you for one reason why I should not take this gun and shoot you in the head."

Ryan thought for a moment. "Because the man I killed, it wasn't me doing it, I didn't mean to."

"But does that change the fact that you did it? Intent or no, you were the cause of a life being ended. Why do you deserve to live on?"

"I don't have a good answer for that." Ryan said.

"So I should kill you?"

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Then it's pure selfishness? The only reason you feel you deserve to live, despite the things you've done and the things you'll no doubt do in the future, is because you _want_ to live?" Ben asked, still not moving.

"Is that the lesson here?" Ryan challenged. "You've come here to teach me that the only way I can redeem myself is if I stop being selfish? You're trying to get me to join the doc's little crew? Tell me this: how am I supposed to learn a lesson if it ends with me dead? How can I redeem myself if I'm six feet under?"

"I didn't say anything about redemption." Ben replied simply.

Ryan was becoming more and more frustrated. "The murderous Miyagi act is cute, but I'm not going to play along. Just be straight with me. Isn't that why you're here? To teach me about being a werewolf?"

Ben did not immediately reply. He took a deep, impossibly long breath.

"No, Ryan. I'm here to kill you." He said. "I can't _teach_ you how to be a werewolf, you _are_ a werewolf. What you want is for me to teach you how to be _human_. You are not a human with a monster inside them, you are a monster who has not yet shed its human sensibilities. You feel the wolf inside your head, even now. I know you do. Robert asked me here to show you the ropes, but that's not why I came. I came to tell you one thing: you cannot beat this. What Robert and the others are trying to do, to keep themselves and each other from tumbling over the edge, it's different for you. If they become slaves to their powers, people may get hurt. When _you_ go over the edge...hundreds will die. You will try to fight it, try to stay on the wagon, but when the lunar cycle comes around you _will_ transform and you _will_ kill again, only this time you'll _enjoy_ it. Once you've killed...consciously, deliberately, you'll never come back."

"You sound pretty sure about my fate for just having met me."

"You are not the first young, good-intentioned werewolf I've come across. Some lasted longer than others but in the end, each and every one became a willing slave to the wolf, to the lust for carnage and dominance and more power. There is not a doubt in my mind that I will save lives if I end yours here and now."

Ryan was even angrier now. He had been expecting answers. He had been expecting help with this gigantic problem; he had been banking on this man to lead him back to some semblance of a normal life. What he had gotten however, was this old man who had already decided that Ryan was an irredeemable brute who posed a threat to everyone around him; a man who had decided that Ryan was so far beyond salvation that it was better just to shoot him. Ryan had been expecting an encouraging mentor, and he was severely disappointed.

On top of it all, Ben's words stung. His complete lack of faith in Ryan was infuriating, but Ryan knew he was right. The young werewolf knew he was dangerous, probably lethal, but he wasn't ready to die, not yet.

"What can I do? This thing that's inside me, you're saying I can't beat it. Well I want to try. What do I do?"

"You do everything you can to redeem yourself." Ben replied.

"You just said you weren't talking about redemption!"

"I'm not saying it's possible, I'm saying it's a path. Unless you try to atone for the innocent blood you've shed, the bloodlust will overtake you. Unless you do all you can to right the wrongs, soon you'll forget that what you did was even wrong at all." Ben said quietly.

"You're telling me to join up with these people."

"I'm telling you that if you want to try and stave off the inevitable, you have to set yourself on a path of redemption. You have to control the wolf and use it for good. You have to purify your soul."

"And you can teach me that? How to use the wolf?"

"I could, but I will not. It is not why I'm here."

Ryan threw up his hands. "Oh, I get it: you're just here to threaten to shoot me then leave. Well thanks for making the trip." Ryan sighed in frustration and took a deep breath. He ran his fingers through his hair and tried to slow his heartbeat. When he spoke again, his voice was calm. "Just give me a chance..."

"To what end?" Ben asked. "Either I choose not to help you and the wolf overcomes you soon, or I do help you and the wolf overcomes you later. The ending is always the same. I learned long ago not to waste time trying to rewrite the story."

Ryan scoffed. He had almost been ready to join these people in their fight, but not if this was how it was going to be. He decided if they were going to just string him along like this, he certainly didn't want to fight alongside them. In the back of Ryan's mind however, he knew what Ben was saying made sense: Ryan wanted to make up for what he had done to Frank Spalding, and fighting against the evil in the city might help him combat the evil in his own brain.

The people at 4197 were united under a common goal of keeping themselves and each other on the straight and narrow. What Ryan had done had put him well out of sight of that particular road. Still, he wondered if, with enough effort, he could find his way back along the path of redemption and join the others on the road to wherever it was they were trying to get. Salvation, perhaps. Ryan didn't know how long it would be before the stain of Spalding's blood would leave his hands, but in his gut he had always known his best shot was here, with these people. In principle, on paper, this wasn't his fight. Ryan knew however, he felt it, that if he gave up his best shot at some kind of karmic forgiveness, that was the first step down the wrong fork in this road.

He had come here wanting to be convinced to join up. Now however, it was Ryan having to do the convincing. He wondered if that had been Ben's plan all along. Or maybe he was just a bitter old man.

"Grayle. He's after me and my family. Let me at least make sure they are safe, let me finish things with him. If I survive, we can revisit the 'going darkside' thing. I'll pull the trigger myself if I have to." And this time, Ryan knew he'd have the strength to do it.

At the mention of Grayle's name, Ben's slow, rhythmic breathing had faltered. His eyes peeled open and stared straight up into Ryan's.

They were the same stone gray as the gravel rooftop, but much to Ryan's surprise, almost kind. Ryan had looked into the eyes of monsters and killers and evil, corrupt men, but Ben was none of those things. He could see now that Ben was not the cold, ruthless killer, but instead his eyes were full of an immense sadness. They spoke of far more tragedies than triumphs in his long life, and it looked as though each one had taken a heavy toll.

"Aaron Grayle?" Ben asked softly.

"You know him?"

"Sit."

Ryan obeyed and sat down on the rough rooftop next to the creased, worn werewolf.

"Legs crossed, hands on your knees, palms up."

Ryan did as he was told.

"Close your eyes and think about one thing and one thing only: your breathing. Think about the air that travels into your lungs. What does it look like? Where does it come from? What currents and breezes led this very breath to this very place at this very time? Where will it go once you have exhaled? Think, and breathe. Think about yesterday, about the things you saw, the people you spoke to. Think about them, and then erase them from your mind. Think about the day before, then the day before that. Think, and breathe, and erase. Think about the night you were bitten. Think, breathe, and erase. Think about your last birthday, your last ten birthdays. Think, breathe, and erase. Empty yourself of you."

Ryan did his best to follow instructions. He had no idea how this was supposed to help him or what Ben knew about Grayle that made him suddenly so compliant, but he focused on the task before him. Thoughts and images and feelings appeared at random in his mind's eye, but Ryan did his best to banish them from his consciousness as quickly as he could. Slowly, little by little, he felt his mind begin to empty. Thoughts drifted in and out but they were of the present, of the sunshine on his face or the sound of the waves behind him. They floated before his closed eyes like wisps of clouds and dissipated just as quickly. His breathing was slow and steady and his heartbeat was a sluggish, passive thump. For the first time since before the attack, Ryan felt relaxed, almost peaceful.

Then the peace was shattered. His body jolted as if every muscle in him had convulsed at the same time. Ryan collapsed to the ground and, as the spasms tore through him, he felt the alien, unreachable corner of his mind expand and grow and seep into more of his brain. He felt the now-familiar sensation of his stomach and organs beginning to squirm and shift, and he knew the pain would be next.

The pain however, was not what he had been expecting. It came in the form of a sharp crack to his lower jaw that sent his head whipping around. His insides came to a rest, the spasms subsided. Ryan opened his eyes to see Ben standing over him. The man watched him for a few more moments with a clenched jaw, then exhaled and sat back down.

"What the hell was that?" Ryan asked as he righted himself and massaged his jaw.

"The wolf."

"The wolf punched me in the face?"

"The wolf is what you felt in your mind, in your chest."

"I know it was in my head, it's never left my head. But that was me starting the transformation, right?" Ryan demanded. "It's day. The full moon isn't for a month!"

"You can feel the beast within you always, but you are its cage. The lock is sprung without your consent on the lunar cycle, but at all other times, you remain in control."

"What do you call what just happened?!"

"Your conscious mind ceded control and _gave_ the monster an opening."

Ryan was becoming more and more confused. "You're saying that any time I don't consciously think about _not_ turning, I might turn?"

"No." Ben replied. "The mind is an elegant machine, running thousands of calculations and adjustments every second. You have breathed every moment of your life, but how many times have you noticed yourself breathing? When left to its own devices, the mind will maintain control of the body in its charge. That is why you do not change even when you sleep. That is why the wolf remains locked in its cage. However, when you deliberately remove your mind from the equation, the wolf can break the surface. If I had not stopped you, you would have transformed completely. Moonlight...or no." Ben said.

"Stopped me? You mean punched me in the jaw?" Ryan asked.

"You would have preferred the alternative?"

"So you're saying that my mind can control the wolf on some level?"

Ben nodded again. "With a practiced enough mind, you can gain control on every level."

"What do you mean? That I could train myself not to change at all? Doesn't that mean I could keep the thing buried, even during the full moon?"

The older man's eyes darkened. "It is nearly impossible. That level of control takes decades of practice, of solitude. It requires levels of concentration and focus that you cannot fathom and will never achieve. Regardless, banishing the beast from within you will not stop Aaron Grayle."

"What will?"

"Controlling it. It is possible to keep your conscious mind during the transformation, even under the full moon. And since the beast is always with you, it is possible to trigger the transformation at will. This is what Robert and Daniel want from you: they want you to gain control of the wolf and become a nearly-unstoppable soldier in their war."

"Can I do it?" Ryan asked.

"Yes. With a little practice and great deal of discipline, you can easily gain control over the transformation. What you cannot control is the wolf. It is always in you, and it is always struggling to get out. Most werewolves that live long enough to master the transformation can do it easily, but keeping such close company with the beast leads them over the edge that much faster. You are inviting your own destruction, and you are doing it with open arms. It is a delicate dance with Fate, and you tempt it every time you transform. With Grayle approaching, you have no choice but to try, but if you somehow survive his wrath and this ends, turn from the wolf as you would a disease. Never use it again."

"How do you know him? Grayle?" Ryan asked after a moment.

Ben didn't answer directly. "The life expectancy of a werewolf is short. The life Grayle has chosen, the life Robert has chosen for you, few active werewolves live longer than a year or two. Werewolves are notoriously brutal. And they are known for killing all other werewolves who try to encroach on their territory. There are so few because each time a new one is made, one kills the other or they kill each other. To my knowledge, Grayle has been active for perhaps ten years, but in terms of werewolf survival, that is astronomical. Not only has he fought and killed every threat to his territory, he has killed every werewolf he has ever come into contact with. The fact that he is still alive is...significant."

"Ten years..." Ryan mused. "How long have _you_ been a werewolf?"

"Longer." Ben said shortly.

"Does Grayle have this control? The things I need to learn?"

"In a way." The man replied. "Grayle can transform at will, and I believe he maintains some level of conscious thought when he does, but it is not because he is in control. Instead he gives himself over to the animal. He welcomes the savagery and brutality and allows it to course through his veins. It is a very different thing."

"Does that make him...better? Stronger?" Ryan asked.

"I doubt it, but his experience does. You will fight Grayle, and he will have no more interest in your loved ones, but only because you'll be dead. I'm sure that Robert or Daniel or Ruby has filled your head with thoughts of glorious battles and fighting the good fight, but you won't live to see any of them. The life you have been cursed with is brutal and short, and if they've told you otherwise, you've been lied to."

A teddy bear, Ruby had called him. Ryan couldn't help but wonder if she meant some other Ben.

"Again." The man said. "This time, when the wolf breaks the surface, concentrate. Use your mind to push it back down, force it back into the cage."

Ryan closed his eyes and focused on his breathing again. His jaw pounded with a dull pain, but he forced the pain from his mind. He repeated the instructions in his mind: think, breathe, and erase.

His mind cleared faster now, but that brought the wolf more swiftly. Ryan wasn't expecting it to come so soon, and when he felt the savage instincts begin to circle his calmed mind, he wasn't fully prepared to defeat them. The movement in his torso began again and Ryan panicked, unsure if he should focus on his mind or his body. The squirming intensified and his hands automatically clutched at his sides until he felt another sharp crack, this time on the opposite side of his face.

"Your mind is the battleground, your body is just a symptom. Control the mind and you control the body. Again."

Ryan shook himself and closed his eyes to begin again. He went far slower this time, terrified that the beast would sneak up on him as it had before. He was afraid of failing a third time and so he stalled. Ryan tried to clear his mind, but he did so slowly. He didn't want to try again, he didn't want the wolf to come back. It was too strong, too relentless. Ryan knew he couldn't control it.

A car horn honked on a distant street and snapped Ryan out of his meditation. It was an interruption that was all too welcome. When he opened his eyes however, Ryan discovered that he was the only one on the rooftop. Ben had disappeared without a word, without a sound, and had left Ryan very much alone. He didn't know where the man had gone, but something told him Ben wouldn't be back. The black pistol lay where he left it, glinting dully in the falling sunlight: a reminder, perhaps, of what Ben believed was Ryan's fate.

Ryan stared at the gun for a long time. Ben was certain that Ryan would inevitably turn evil, but Ryan couldn't help but wonder: what the hell did Ben know about him? It was Ryan's life and he didn't care how high the deck was stacked. If he wanted to defeat Grayle, that's what he was going to do. If he wanted to live, dammit he was going to live. Ryan had never believed in destiny and he wasn't about to start just because his was supposed to be crappy. He'd conquer the wolf, then he'd kill Grayle, then he'd run with Dr. Webster and the rest and take back the city and fight the good fight until his debt was paid. As far as Ryan was concerned, destiny could go to hell.

He snatched up the gun and set across the rooftop at a sprint. Ryan heaved his arm back and brought it forward with all the might he could muster. The pistol flew spinning into the air and sailed over the gravel and the pavement and the grass and the docks. It landed in the gray waters of the harbor with a splash.

Ryan took a deep, satisfying breath and returned to his spot at the other end of the roof. He sat down again: legs crossed, palms up. He grit his teeth and attacked the corners of his cluttered mind. He slowed his breathing and began to erase.

***

He didn't know how long he had been on the roof, only that when he finally decided to clamber back through the trap door, night had long since fallen.

Ryan's progress had been slow: he could clear his mind until the wolf part of his brain began to expand in his consciousness, and then Ryan could force the wolf back into submission. The physical symptoms had ceased entirely, but that was Ryan's only indication of progress. He didn't know what the next step was. He didn't know how he was supposed to take the miniscule amount he had learned and use it to transform at will or control the wolf within him entirely. He had hit a wall and he knew he needed a break, so he trudged down the clanging metal stairs onto the first level of the warehouse.

Daniel was still there, but now he was playing pool alone at the scratched and scarred table.

"He has gone?" Daniel asked without looking up from his shot.

"Yeah, for a while now. Does he do that a lot?"

"Ben dislikes staying anywhere for too long."

"Why?" Ryan asked, and Daniel smiled.

"I have known him for more than forty years, and yet I do not have the faintest idea at an answer to that question." He replied in his low, melodic voice.

"You don't look old enough to have known anybody for forty years." Ryan said.

"I take that as a great compliment, but believe me when I say that I have known many men for much longer." The cue sprang forward between his fingers and a ball shot into a pocket with a satisfying clack. "Would you like to play?"

"No thanks, pool isn't really my thing. More of a mini-golf man. If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?"

Daniel smiled again. "I first played billiards with Louis XI. It was not his game either. Though he did try to cheat at every turn."

"Louis the...that's hundreds of years. When were you born?"

Daniel sighed. "1178, in the Iberian peninsula. I cannot tell you which day or month because I simply do not know." He lined up another shot. "I was a soldier, and a good one. One day, one of the other footsoldiers in my battalion defected, and I was given the assignment to either retrieve him or kill him. I found him at his home and tried to persuade him to return. He refused. We struggled and eventually I killed him. The elders in his village were angry with me, claiming that I had brought death and war upon their homes. They placed a curse upon me then: to live forever, that I might see the eternal consequences of man's wars. And in order to better see the carnage and suffering that I represented, they gave me the form of the bird. In 1212 when the Muslims were driven from Central Iberia, I was conscripted into one of the armies of Alfonso VIII because of my stature and skill. As the centuries passed, I found myself in England, then France, then all over the regions of Europe. Always a footsoldier. I have seen more wars and killed more men than I can possibly recall, but billiards...billiards quiets both the mind and the memories."

Ryan didn't know what to say. He was still struggling to believe it.

"If you're invincible, how does Hess even stand a chance?"

"I am not invincible."

"You said you could live forever."

"Old age will not take me. Disease cannot fell me. But that does not mean I cannot be killed. In fact I have come quite close, many, many times." The soldier replied.

"So you _can_ be killed, but you're saying that in the eight hundred some odd years you've been fighting wars, you just _haven't_ been killed?" Ryan asked, incredulous.

"Yes."

The topic of his age, or perhaps his bloody, violent life, seemed to make Daniel uncomfortable and he changed the subject.

"Ben recited his sermon on doom and inevitability, I take it?" Daniel asked.

"You disagree with him?"

Daniel sank another ball. "Make no mistake, Ryan: yours is a difficult path, perhaps more than anyone else here. Simply because a task is difficult however, does not make it impossible. I believe you can control the beast and maintain your goodness, I have seen it done."

"Ben says that the odds are stacked too heavily against me, that all the other werewolves he has known have let their power corrupt them. That the next time I taste blood...I'll never go back."

"But you have something those other werewolves did not have."

"What?" Ryan asked.

"Us. That is the very reason we are all here: to save us from ourselves. We can help you." Daniel replied. "The war we find ourselves in now is no different from any other. The fighting does not take place on battlefields, but in basements and back alleys, but it is war nonetheless. Believe me when I say, Ryan, that a man can weather any storm if he has two things: singularity of purpose, and people to watch out for him."

### Chapter 15

It had been nearly a week since Ryan had first sat on the roof of the warehouse at 4197 Mockingbird, but he had spent so much time there in the following days that it felt like he had never left. Every day after school he found himself on the roof, struggling to confront and then control the murderous manifestation of his savage subconscious.

In the other aspects of Ryan's life, it had been a week worthy of very little mention. School marched unceasingly on, but with no looming tests or papers, Ryan found himself paying even less attention in class than usual. His parents had bought the lie about his newfound interest in debate club and the amount of after-school work it required. His absences from home no longer unexplained, his evenings were now free to practice, which was exactly what he had been doing.

Unfortunately for Ryan, Evelyn was nowhere to be found at 4197. She had been away on an extended reconnaissance mission and Ryan hadn't seen her since the morning she had nearly shot him through the eye. Her absence however, had not stopped him from thinking, or indeed dreaming, about her.

Regardless, the week had been productive. Ryan felt he was making real progress with the wolf, but more importantly, he had been able to smooth things over with the people who mattered to him the most. He had told Vanessa, and then Eli, everything.

Ryan had been stunned by how well they had taken all the news, especially Eli, who had acted as if he knew everything all along.

"Well there had to be some truth to it, right?" He had said when Ryan told him that monsters and psychics and vampires were real and all around them. "Thousands of years of mythology and legend must have had a basis in _something_. Makes sense. I always knew Warren Zevon would never lead me astray. What concerns me most is this girl: she's single? And smokin'? Something's got to be wrong with her. I'd take it upon myself to find out, but somehow I always end up getting slapped."

"Whereas this time you're more likely to get-" Ryan had begun.

"Shot. Yeah, exactly. Have fun with this one, buddy."

Tonight was the first night Ryan had spent time with his friends since he had come clean about his condition. To Ryan's delight, the evening was going much better than he had expected: they were acting as if nothing at all had changed. Tonight he was taking a break from the meditation and the warehouse, and it felt good. The last thing he wanted was for things to be awkward or strange between him and his friends.

His good mood however, was fading quickly. He was five kills behind and Vanessa, despite having a magazine open on her lap, insisted on backseat-gaming.

"Assault rifle behind you." She muttered.

"I know."

"He's headed to the sniper tower."

"I know!"

Six kills behind. Then, game.

"While you're busy trying to save the world, some of us are focusing on what really matters." Eli said. "Like learning all the new maps and memorizing spawn points. You handle this planet, Ryan. I'll look after the rest of the galaxy."

Eli dropped his controller on the square of shag carpeting beneath him and stretched.

Night had fallen and the shadows in Eli's basement became longer and darker. Vanessa reached over and flicked on a lamp that bathed the area in its warm glow.

"So what's your plan for this girl?" Eli asked. "Just hope she's a dog person?"

"No plan, I just want to see her again."

"Have you asked V what you should do? V, what should he do?"

Vanessa glanced at Ryan, then looked back at her magazine. "I don't know," she began hesitantly, "I don't know anything about this girl."

"So the whole 'feminine intuition' thing, not quite what it's cracked up to be..." Eli muttered.

"It doesn't work on other females, moron." She shot back. "Besides, all feminine intuition really amounts to is one principle: don't date Eli."

"Ah," Eli replied, "so I have evolutionary biology to blame. That's certainly a load off my mind."

"Can't imagine your mind was too heavily loaded to begin with." Vanessa remarked.

Ryan felt his phone vibrating. He slid the phone from his pocket and unlocked the screen. It was a text from Evelyn: _Warehouse in 10._

"Speak of the hottie and she doth appear." Eli mused, reading over Ryan's shoulder. "Looks like she's back in town."

"And wants to meet with me. I wonder why."

"The nights are long and cold without Ryan." Eli said. "Believe me, I know."

Ryan rolled his eyes. He didn't want to let himself think like that, but that's exactly what some part of him _was_ thinking. He couldn't stop it even if he tried.

"I guess I've got to bail." Ryan said, getting up from the couch.

"Sure, go, fight evil. We'll be here, having fun without a care in the world."

He started for the door, but as he did, Vanessa caught his arm in her grasp. Ryan spun around and they locked eyes immediately. The big, blue pools bored into him and she mouthed two words: _Be careful_. Ryan smiled, winked, and was gone.

It took him a little longer than ten minutes to reach the warehouse, but he figured that was just as well. He didn't want to seem too eager.

Ryan didn't actually believe that there was any personal motive behind Evelyn's actions, since they had barely ever spoken. Even so, that didn't stop him from checking and re-checking his tousled hair or gulping down four Altoids during the drive.

He turned onto Mockingbird and saw that, for the first time, the outer garage door to the warehouse stood open. Dim orange light streamed from the building onto the street.

He parked the Cherokee off to the side of the driveway and made his way into the garage. Evelyn was waiting for him, just as stunning as he remembered, wearing her black tank top. Instead of jeans however, tonight she was wearing baggy black combat pants with cargo pockets and flexible plastic knee pads sewn in. The pants were tucked into black, lace-up combat boots that came halfway to her knee.

The change in wardrobe however, was not what startled Ryan: it was her accessories. The slim silver pistol he was all too familiar with was strapped to Evelyn's thigh in a hip holster. Another smaller, black handgun was tucked beneath her arm in a shoulder holster, and what looked like a small submachine gun was slung across her chest.

"You know Hans Gruber died, right? You don't have to worry about that anymore." Ryan said.

"I know it's a little overboard, that's the point. We've got to rouse the rabble."

"Well you look ready to turn the rabble to rubble."

Evelyn double-checked the submachine gun then walked back to the work bench to grab a fourth pistol, which she also checked.

"Let's go." She said. "You're driving."

"My car? Why? You've got a hundred cars right here, and they all drive better than mine."

"Yeah, but if somebody IDs our plates, I'd rather have them coming after you than me."

"Oh. Yeah. Right." Ryan replied. "Why didn't I think of that?" He rolled his eyes.

Evelyn punched a button inside the garage and the door began to descend. They made their way back to the Cherokee and clambered in. Ryan mentally kicked himself for not throwing away the empty Doritos bag on the floor of the passenger seat.

"Where to?" He asked.

"Shipping docks. Follow the waterfront." She replied. Ryan obeyed.

He pulled out onto the main road and travelled parallel to the harbor. Evelyn laid the fourth pistol on her lap and inspected it.

"Have you ever fired a gun before?" She asked.

"Not recently."

"Well they haven't changed much. Bullets come out that end."

"Yeah, that sounds familiar. It's all coming back to me now. If it's not too much trouble, could you tell me what the hell is going on? Not that I don't want to spend time with you and your four, very angry-looking friends, but I don't have control over anything yet. I've been sitting on a roof for the better part of a week and that's as far as I've gotten. I can't transform."

"Don't worry, it happens to a lot of guys." She replied. "I don't need you to be Super Wolf Guy tonight, I need you to stand there, keep your mouth shut, and look intimidating."

"Isn't that more of Daniel's area of expertise?"

"You've got to get your feet wet sometime, and there's no time like the present. This is a milk run. You are in no danger. I wouldn't have brought you along if I thought things might turn ugly. But you need to see what's going on. You need to see what we're up against." She finished.

"You're the boss." Ryan replied.

She gave a wry smile. "And don't ever forget it." She held up the fourth gun so Ryan could see it. "This is a Colt M1911A1. It is simple, it is reliable, and it will kill most human-sized things that have a heartbeat. You, however, are not going to kill anything. There are live rounds in this gun, but you will leave the safety on. Hold it, but do not point it at anyone. And definitely do not pull the trigger."

"I think I can handle that."

The gun was nickel-plated with black grips, and though Ryan was no gun aficionado, he liked the look of this one.

Evelyn pulled the familiar silver gun off her hip and began to inspect it. It was different than Ryan's, sleeker with more of a shine.

"Why is yours different?" He asked.

She let the slide clack back into place. "Because unlike you, I know what the hell I am doing. This is the Jericho 941, and I intend to take it to the grave. Won it off some chump in Barstow, and this baby and I have been together ever since.

"Touching story."

"Purer love than you'll ever know."

"That's probably true."

Evelyn slipped the Jericho back into her holster and a silence fell.

"Are we going to go over a plan or something? Are you gonna give me any kind of clue as to what we're actually doing?" Ryan asked after a moment.

She pulled the small black pistol from her shoulder holster and began to inspect it as well.

"What do you know about Vain?"

"The street drug? Only what's in the news."

"The media has no idea how widespread this stuff is. In fact it's been Anthony Hess' biggest revenue stream since the commercial real estate market took a dive." Evelyn replied.

"A vampire drug dealer?"

"Vampire drug _kingpin_. Demand is going steadily up and he's the only one who can supply it."

"Why?" Ryan asked.

"Because he's the only one who knows how to make it. They mix a tiny bit of some pure, narcotic hybrid into a few ounces of blood then sell it as a kind of macabre cocktail. Mostly they use pig's blood which is bad enough. Lately though, we've been recovering more and more samples of higher quality stuff that uses human blood, but we don't know where he's getting it from."

"People pay to drink blood?"

"It's a cheap, flashy-looking designer drug that can be taken orally and it's not too powerful or too addictive to scare away casual users. The yuppies and WASPs of this town are all over the stuff."

"How do we fit in? It's just another drug on the streets, right? Isn't that still police jurisdiction?"

"What do you actually know about vampirism?" Evelyn asked.

"Probably very little."

"It's not a supernatural curse, not like yours, it's a virus. It's a virus that's transmitted via bodily fluids. The only bodily fluids vampires have left is the blood that is sitting stagnant in their veins."

Ryan tried to put the pieces together in his head. "So theoretically, Hess could put vampire blood into this drug and make anyone who doses on it into a vampire?"

"Theoretically."

"So little by little, he could turn the entire population into vampires?"

She shook her head. "He'd have no reason to. It's not good business. You don't make money by turning your customer base into a bunch of animalistic psychos."

"Except on Black Friday."

She ignored him. "You have to understand that ninety nine percent of vampires are like the worst kind of heroin addict: the bloodlust drives them to the brink of madness. It's all they can think about. Most of them are closer to animals than humans. Hess has been around long enough though, and he's smart enough, to have figured out a way to overcome the bloodlust at least to the point where he can still function normally. There are hundreds of vampires in this city, and maybe half a dozen that can still carry on a normal conversation."

"Hundreds? And they all work for Hess?"

"Or Renart. Vampires don't last long if left to their own devices. They tear each other to shreds. Give them a leader and the promise of rationed blood, and you've got yourself an army of very willing, very desperate monsters." She replied.

"I don't suppose crucifixes do much good, then?"

"The crucifixes and stakes and stuff are all part of the religious mythology and most of it is untrue. Kill a vampire like you would kill a human: cut off the head, destroy the brain. Don't bother aiming for the heart, it's just dead weight like the rest of their organs."

"What about sunlight?"

"Their skin is basically dead, so it can't process the rays in the same way we can. Bottom line is that it hurts them like hell, but they're not going to burst into flame."

"So if these things are so mindless," Ryan wondered, "why would Hess want to turn more people into vampires? It sounds like his army is already plenty big for his purposes."

"That's the question." Evelyn replied. "That's what we're going to find out."  
"What do the docks have to do with anything?"

"We think Hess produces Vain somewhere in the city, but he imports nearly all of his raw ingredients from overseas. He's been moving supply for months: ships coming in from China, Portugal, Egypt, Thailand. We haven't found his factory yet, but when we do we're going to have to hit it hard. We're going to the docks to intercept a shipment and hopefully pump somebody on his payroll for information."

"And that's why you're sporting the Ted Nugent ensemble? You're trying to scare them?"

"Think it'll work?"

"Well _I'm_ scared of you."

"I suppose that's a start. Pull in here."

Ryan nosed the Cherokee onto a side street that put them closer to the waterfront. They were at the shipping docks now, and squat, ugly buildings were further dwarfed by the towers of multi-colored cargo containers.

"Right up here, #38."

He pulled up to the curb next to the pier Evelyn had indicated and put the Jeep in park.

"You know," Ryan began, "you never told me what your power is. I mean, what can you-"

"Shut up." She whispered urgently and her hand shot past Ryan to flick the headlights off. "Kill the engine."

He did, and she pulled him down low behind the dash. Their faces were inches from each other and the longer they crouched there awkwardly, the more Ryan thought he felt a strange heat coming off Evelyn. It was a pulsing, dry, almost tangible heat as if her entire body were wracked with some terrible fever. Ryan wanted to ask her what was going on, but he figured it was a bad idea to disobey a woman strapped with enough ordnance to occupy Liechtenstein.

Two men crossed the street a few feet in front of the car: one tall, muscular and completely bald, the other shorter and slightly less muscular. Ryan prayed that they hadn't seen his headlights or heard his engine. He knew he couldn't afford a shootout in this car, not with his insurance rates.

The men didn't seem to have noticed anything, and they made their way towards the pier and between the skyscrapers of cargo containers. They were speaking to each other, but their voices were low and hushed and Ryan couldn't make anything out.

Wordlessly, Evelyn slipped the Colt into Ryan's hand. As she did, their fingers touched for a moment and Ryan felt the incredible heat coming off her skin. Her finger seemed impossibly hot to the touch. She caught Ryan's eye and whispered in a barely-audible voice.

"Follow me. Stay low."

She slipped out of the car and Ryan followed, trying to silence his footsteps on the worn pavement. Across the street behind them was a single-story administration building next to an empty parking lot whose edges were overgrown with weeds. Before them was the maze of shipping containers that created long, black hallways that Ryan's eyes could not penetrate. He could hear the gentle lapping of the ocean somewhere beyond the containers, but he knew there were at least a few hundred more yards of concrete pier between him and the water.

Evelyn slunk low and kept herself in the shadow of one of the walls of crates. What little moonlight there was stopped far short of illuminating either of them, and Ryan followed with the Colt heavy in his already-sweating hand.

They made their way into the maze at a moderate pace, with Evelyn clearly more concerned with keeping an eye on the two men than she was with being silent. She was dressed for the occasion and, even in the heavy combat boots, her liquid grace made her movements almost noiseless. Ryan on the other hand, had been told nothing of a stealth mission. His dark brown jacket provided some camouflage, but his jeans still swished audibly when he moved.

There was a dim yellow light at the end of the row and from this distance, Ryan could just make out a small staging area. There were forklifts and a few battered, identical pick-up trucks, as well as a large trailer, the type used as temporary offices on construction sites. The light came from a single, high-powered electrical bulb flickering in its rusted shade mounted high on a pole. It cast its light in a broad, diffused circle and illuminated just enough that Ryan could make out the two men standing beneath it, with a single wooden crate between them.

Compared to the other cargo containers, this crate was tiny: perhaps the size of a refrigerator laid on its side. It sat atop a large wooden pallet used to transport the crate via forklift. The box was completely unmarked, but it was the only thing the men were paying any attention to.

"Looks like just the two lackeys." Evelyn whispered. "Do you see anybody else?"

Ryan couldn't see much of anything, but he shook his head nonetheless.

"Make sure the gun is visible. Try to look mean. If I tell you to, either run like hell or hit the deck."

She took a firm grip on the submachine gun with her left hand and drew the silver pistol with her right. The heat was almost exploding off her skin now, and she took a deep breath before stepping out into the light, her eyes narrowed, jaw clenched, chin held high. Ryan followed close behind and tried to puff out his chest. His heart was pounding in his ears and his knees shook from the adrenaline and fear, but he tried to convey an air of danger. For all he knew, he looked like a moron.

"I don't know what you two are, but whatever it is, I got no problem with killing it." Evelyn announced, and the two men spun around to face them.

Both men's hands moved to their waistbands, but Evelyn trained a gun on each of them and they stopped.

"No need for things to get nasty." She said.

"You drew first." Said the man who was larger, nearer, and balder.

"Just had to make sure we could agree on a nice, civilized conversation." Evelyn replied, keeping the guns level.

"That H&K," the smaller man ventured, indicating the submachine gun, "that's not cop-issue. You work for the trickster?"

"I'm an interested party."

"Human?" The larger man asked.

"Only at weddings and during reruns of _Gilmore Girls_. The rest of the time I'm a stone-cold badass and a crack shot. This is one of those times. Plan accordingly."

"We couldn't tell you anything even if we wanted to. Our boss will pick his teeth with our ribs." Said the larger man.

"Well I'm going to kill you if you don't talk and Hess'll kill you if you do. I guess the question is who you're more afraid of." She replied.

The small man scoffed. "You're right. We should side with the bossy teenager over the vampire that owns every inch of this town. How thick-"

A shot rang out, a deafening bang that reverberated off the steel containers. Ryan and the larger man jumped in surprise, while the smaller man crumpled to the ground and clutched his shattered kneecap that had exploded through his jeans.

The man screamed in pain and Evelyn leveled the smoking silver gun at his head. His cries immediately died to a whimper as he cowered in fear.

The uninjured man recovered from the surprise, but simply smiled. "Nothing you could do to us can compare to what Hess does to people who betray him. Hell itself can't compare."

She firmed her grip on the submachine gun pointed at the man. "How about I send you there and you let us know?"

The man smiled cruelly and a heavy stillness hung in the air.

"I don't like killing humans." Evelyn continued, her jaw set.

"Then that's a difference between you and me."

Faster than Ryan could blink, the man's hand shot to his waistband and his fingers closed around a black pistol. Evelyn let loose a burst of machine gun fire at the man's feet. The warning went unheeded and in a split second, the man had drawn the pistol and raised it to return fire.

Ryan didn't even have time to react, but Evelyn, with impossible speed, swung her pistol around and let fly with two rounds that struck the man squarely in the chest. The black gun fell out of his hand and clattered to the ground as he crumpled to the asphalt.

Evelyn didn't move or even breathe for a few seconds. She stood completely still with the gun trained on the man, waiting to see if he would get up.

He didn't move, but he wasn't dead. The man's breath came in ragged gasps and each cough produced more spittle and blood.

"Watch him." She instructed Ryan, as she stepped over to the smaller man and stripped him of his weapon.

Ryan approached the downed man and pointed his gun gingerly at his head. He kicked the black gun away and it skittered beyond the lamplight and into the darkness.

Evelyn made her way over to the crate and set about trying to open it. They hadn't brought any tools, and Ryan doubted a machine gun would do much to solve this particular problem.

As she puzzled over the crate, his gaze fell back to the dying man. The gun in Ryan's hands was getting heavy, and the adrenaline was making his hands shake almost uncontrollably. As he fought to steady them, a tiny blinking light caught his eye.

Something inside the man's front pants pocket was giving off a small red light at one-second intervals. Ryan reached down and pulled out what looked like a small transmitter of some kind. His first thought was a GPS tracker, but then he saw that the transmitter bore a small plastic button that looked like it had been pressed. Ryan's second thought was bomb.

"Uhh, Evelyn? We've got a problem." He said, trying to keep one eye on the men in his charge.

"No kidding." She replied.

"No, seriously. Forget the crate."

She looked up at him and Ryan tossed her the transmitter. "What is it? A bomb?" He asked.

Evelyn turned it over in her hands, a quizzical look on her face.

Suddenly a noise reached their ears from the far end of the cargo container-hallway. It was a rustling that turned into the pattering of and scraping of feet. Many feet.

Something dawned on Evelyn. "Oh crap." She said.

She tossed the transmitter away and picked up her guns. "Run."

Evelyn took off at dead sprint and Ryan, confused and anxious, followed her as best he could. Their shoes slapped against the concrete as Evelyn led them into the maze of shipping containers. The wind rushed past Ryan's ears and his own breathing came in loud gasps, but he could still hear the scraping behind them. In fact, it sounded like it was gaining on them.

Evelyn dashed through passageways and barreled around corners, seemingly at random. As far as Ryan could tell, she didn't have a destination, she was just trying to put as much distance between them and their pursuers as possible. They were failing.

In the narrow passageways between containers, the blackness was nearly absolute. Ryan couldn't see much past Evelyn, and he couldn't see more than a few feet behind him. The only clues he had were the sounds made by whomever or whatever was chasing them. The footfalls and scraping grew louder by the second. Ryan wondered if it could be Grayle and he felt his blood chill in his veins. After a moment however, he realized that if they were being chased by a werewolf, they'd have been dead already. The thought gave him little comfort.

The two teenagers scrambled around a corner and found themselves back where they had begun. The forklifts, trucks, crate, and trailer were all in the same place, still half-illuminated by the flickering light. The bodies of the two men however, were gone. In their places were long, slick smears of dark red blood that reflected dull light off the black pavement. There were ragged shreds of clothing here and there and small, scattered piles of glistening viscera, as well as the occasional big toe.

Evelyn hesitated only for a moment. She looked at the carnage and then down the long, dark hallway back to the street. Even Ryan knew they'd never outrun their pursuers back to the Cherokee, not over open terrain. She grabbed him by the arm and they dashed to the far end of the trailer and up the metal steps to the door. Evelyn kicked it in with a loud crack and the two dove inside.

It was dark in the trailer, but the light from the outside was enough for them to work with. There were two built-in administration desks that supported countless stacks of papers and manifests as well as a pair of ancient desktop computers. To the side was a large gray filing cabinet, which they slid into position as a barricade for the broken door.

They stood still for a moment to listen. Ryan heard nothing of their pursuers, only his and Evelyn's panting gasps for breath. He didn't dare approach the window to peek out.

"Vampires." Evelyn whispered breathlessly.

"Can they find us here?"

"Yes."

"So what do we do?"

She looked at him, then at their surroundings, then at the windows. "I...don't know."

For the first time, Ryan felt himself become truly afraid. The chase through the pitch-black maze had been frightening, but he had trusted Evelyn to get them out. It had never crossed his mind that they might come up against something she couldn't handle. It had never crossed his mind that with her, he was anything less than perfectly safe. Now however, the possibility dawned on him: this double-wide trailer may very well become his tomb. Ryan felt a flash of anger at Evelyn for getting him into this situation, and for not having a back-up plan.

The sound of a faint hiss penetrated the trailer and they crept toward the window. The vampires had returned, and were fighting over the scraps that remained of the two men. There were at least a dozen creatures, and none of them seemed as concerned with finding Ryan and Evelyn as they were with slurping up every last bit of blood from the pavement.

They fought and jockeyed for position like animals on the Serengeti, but still looked human enough that the behavior shook Ryan to his core. He reminded himself that they _were_ human, or at least that they used to be.

Even in the low light he could see that their skin was a sickly sallow color, like that of terminal patients in an ICU who were not long for this world. They were very skinny, emaciated, and their loose, saggy skin clung to their bones like a thin shroud. Their fingernails were long, ragged, and yellow, but only in places where they weren't already caked with fresh or crusted blood. Their hair was patchy and stringy, and in some places falling out altogether. The skin on their heads and faces seemed to be stretched tight over their skulls, and the bones beneath the milky skin protruded at harsh, unsightly angles. This also made the ears stick out more than usual, which gave them the illusion of coming to sharp points at the top. Their mouths were smeared in crimson blood, but long, sharp incisors were visible behind thin, pale lips. The faces themselves were gaunt with sunken eyes that appeared cloudy and dull, but even in this light Ryan could see that there was still something behind those eyes. Perhaps it wasn't life, or any kind of real intelligence, but these savage creatures weren't entirely mindless, despite the fact that they had just dismembered and gorged themselves on the life force of two human men. Their mannerisms and actions and especially their eyes all showed signs of some lost humanity, but maintaining that humanity was clearly no longer a priority, not compared to the bloodlust.

It was that fact that disturbed Ryan the most: these things didn't look like storybook monsters, they looked, more or less, like humans. They still wore tattered, filthy human clothes and used their opposable thumbs, but they were committing acts of such untamed, feral barbarism that it gave him chills to think about the madness that had been unleashed on these people. In a very real way, Ryan pitied them. At the same time however, he knew that at any moment they could come after him in this trailer. One mistake, one wrong move, and Ryan knew he and Evelyn would be swarmed in an instant.

He looked over at Evelyn who was staring out the window at the same grisly scene. Her bright green eyes reflected the dingy orange light that flickered like a dancing flame on her irises. There was no fear in her eyes, not so far as Ryan could see, only anticipation. He wished he looked half as calm. Her gaze roamed around the room and fell to rest on a point past Ryan's head. He turned around and followed her line of sight to a pegboard with a dozen keys hanging on hooks. She gritted her teeth and looked down at the semi-automatic in Ryan's hand.

"Turn the safety off." She whispered.

"You told me never to turn it off. I still have zero training with this thing."

"Fine. _Throw_ the bullets at them for all I care." She snapped.

Ryan flicked the safety on the side of the gun. Evelyn peered back out the window.

"Pull the slide back to chamber a round. You've got seven shots, so make them count." Evelyn instructed.

"Any...safety tips?"

"Yeah, don't shoot me in the ass."

Evelyn slunk past Ryan to the pegboard and grabbed a key. She returned and pressed it into his hand as she propped one leg up against the filing cabinet, ready to kick it out of the way. "I'm going to cover you while you grab a truck. Get back here as quick as you can, I don't think I have enough ammo for all of them."

Ryan nodded and looked down at the key in his hand. There was a strip of worn masking tape on the top of it, and scrawled on the tape in permanent marker was _#3_.

She looked at him, right into his eyes, and Ryan adjusted his grip on the Colt. Evelyn took a deep breath. "One...two...three."

She gave the filing cabinet a hard kick and sent it crashing to the ground. The two burst out of the trailer and Evelyn let loose with a hail of gunfire. The submachine gun rattled through ammunition in short bursts and the Jericho thundered away with ear-splitting bangs.

Two of the vampires collapsed, even more dead than they were before. The others, however, reacted and attacked with incredible speed.

Ryan vaulted down the stairs and sprinted towards the parked trucks. As he drew nearer to the vehicles, he heard at least one creature give chase behind him, but he didn't dare look back until he had to. Ryan reached the trucks and searched desperately for "Truck #3", but he couldn't see anywhere they were marked. He spun around and found himself face-to-face with a vampire that had been much closer on his heels than he'd thought. It was perhaps six feet away and as soon as Ryan turned, it leapt through the air at him. Ryan brought up the gun and squeezed the trigger. The semi-automatic bucked wildly in his hand and caused him to almost lose his grip on it entirely. The bullet sailed off into the night far from its intended mark. He took a split second to recover and readjust, but by then the vampire was on top of him and they both went crashing to the ground between two of the trucks.

The creature was wiry as a pipe cleaner but deceptively strong. Ryan's back was on the asphalt, and the vampire was on top him struggling for position as Ryan tried to kick it away. Its breath was a stale, putrid stench that nearly made Ryan gag as he lifted his arm to instinctively cover his throat. It was a stupid mistake that Ryan realized much too late: the blood coursing through his arm was just as appetizing as the blood in his neck.

The vampire snapped its jaws open and sank its incisors into the flesh of Ryan's forearm. Any pity Ryan had felt for these creatures had vanished. He cried out in anguish as the sharp pain momentarily blurred his vision. He shook the vampire free and struck it across the jaw as he did. The creature disoriented, Ryan swung his other hand around and stabbed the gun barrel under the chin and into its throat as he pulled the trigger. The bullet ripped through the neck and spinal cord and sprayed the ground in dark, stagnant blood. The vampire collapsed on top of Ryan, who shoved it off in disgust. He didn't know if the thing was truly killed or if the brain could simply no longer communicate with the rest of the body, but it wasn't attacking him anymore and that was good enough. He didn't want to waste time or ammunition making sure it was dead, he wanted to get out while he could. Ryan allowed himself to feel a twinge of pride at the monster he had felled on his own, but he knew it was still a matter of one down, more than a dozen to go.

He found the numbers stenciled in black paint on the backs of the trucks, and clambered into number three as he wiped vampire blood from his face with his sleeve. He made sure not to get any in his mouth, even though he had no idea if werewolves were even vulnerable to the vampire virus. Ryan jammed the key in the ignition, floored the pedal, and the truck screeched out of line and barreled back towards the trailer.

Evelyn had climbed on top of the trailer and was fighting vampires on all sides. The creatures scrambled up the sides of the office and over one another in desperate attempts to claim the fresh blood for themselves. Evelyn let fly with burst after burst of gunfire, but even from this distance Ryan could see that she was about to be overrun.

He raced to the staging area as fast as the old truck would go and he slammed full-speed into three vampires as he skidded the truck to hasty stop beside the trailer. Evelyn fired off one more burst and leapt into the bed of the truck. The vampires had turned to assess this new threat and Ryan saw all three of his mirrors fill up with the undead.

"Go!" Evelyn screamed through the cab's back window and Ryan put sneaker to pedal as they shot off into the darkness. The vampires gave chase, but even they couldn't keep up with eight cylinders and soon their ghostly white forms faded into the black. Ryan took a long, ragged exhale and focused on getting back to the Cherokee in one piece. He heard a knock on the back window and reached back to slide it open.

"Pull over!" Evelyn shouted over the rush of wind.

"No thanks!" Ryan shouted back.

"Trust me! We need to finish this!" She yelled.

Ryan fought every survival instinct in his body and screeched the truck to a stop in the middle of the dark hallway. They were perhaps fifty yards from the street and the Cherokee, but already Ryan could hear the footfalls of the vampires closing in.

Evelyn jumped out of the back of the truck and Ryan slid out of the cab.

"Get back to your car, get it running. We're going to have to get out of here fast." She instructed.

"I'm sorry, but the speedy getaway is what you just _stopped_. We were home free!"

"And leave a handful of vampires running loose? We have to finish it." Evelyn replied.

"Do you even have the ammo left?" Ryan asked, not believing what he was hearing.

"I've got enough. Now get back to the street."

Ryan left the truck sputtering idle and ran back to the Cherokee as instructed. He fired up the engine and watched through the driver's side window as the dim form of Evelyn jogged a few yards away from the truck and then spun on her heel to face the coming horde. He watched, but she didn't move. She didn't run or hide, she simply stood there.

Her pistols were in their holsters, the submachine gun slung at her back. With her hands completely empty, she stood between Ryan and the truck, with nothing but the truck between her and the vampires. He saw the first one emerge from the darkness like a pale specter materializing in the fog. Then another, and another. The creatures came to a slow, suspicious halt as they found the truck. They gathered around the coughing vehicle and began to inspect it and the surrounding area. They swarmed over the truck like insects, jumping onto the hood and into the bed, searching for any trace of their quarry...or of blood. Ryan knew they would see Evelyn any second, and he flung the car door open to help just as she made her move.

She raised her empty hand, palm and fingers extended, and for a long moment, nothing happened. The movement had caught the attention of the vampires, who leapt snarling from the truck and set out after her in unison.

A brilliant orange flash erupted and seared through the inky dark as the truck exploded in a blinding fireball that created a wave of heat so intense that Ryan could feel it even from this distance. The force of the explosion rattled the cargo containers and reverberated through the night a deafening boom that echoed down both ends of the long metal hallway. He watched as one after the other, each vampire was swallowed up in the explosion and destroyed mid-run as Evelyn dashed back to the Cherokee and threw herself inside.

"Drive." She instructed. Ryan didn't think twice about obeying.

The Jeep sped away from the dock and Ryan watched in his rear-view mirror as the yellow flames rose and licked at the starry sky. Even with the windows up, Ryan smelled something very close to an odor he thought might be burning flesh.

"Well there's something you don't see every day." He said.

### Chapter 16

It wasn't the hero's welcome Ryan had been half-expecting. In fact, as Dr. Webster was so quick to point out, their jaunt at the docks hadn't been all that heroic: they had saved their own lives after being the ones to put them in danger. Still, Ryan would have liked a little congratulation on not getting ripped to pieces, but he supposed a completely intact, blood-filled body was its own reward. Webster, on the other hand, was less content.

"What were you thinking?!" He demanded of Evelyn. Ryan stood off to the side and tried to make himself as invisible as possible while Ruby tended to his cuts and scrapes with a strange-smelling ointment.

Dr. Webster continued. "You don't run off and pull a job half-cocked, with zero useable intel, and you certainly don't do it without taking back-up or without telling anyone!"

Ryan could see that the words were cutting into Evelyn like razor blades, but she remained defiant. "I had intel and I had to move. The shipment was coming in tonight, I couldn't wait around to get the Robert Webster seal of approval. You're barely ever around anymore. I took Ryan because I knew he could handle it. And you know what? He did. We both did. We both made it back. No harm, no foul."

Dr. Webster scoffed. "No harm? Two men are dead because of what you did. You torched civilian docks. Who's going to pay for that? And you didn't learn anything! You didn't even manage to get the crate open. But worst of all, you tipped our hand. Hess knows we're onto him now. He's going to stop using the docks and he's going to be taking even more precautions. You blew our shot at learning everything and in the process you learned nothing."

Evelyn's voice dropped. "He could still think it was Renart...maybe Renart hit him to try and disrupt his production. He doesn't know for sure it was us..."

The doctor gave no quarter. "Even if we are that lucky, it doesn't change anything. He's still going to be looking over his shoulder twice as often now, and that means we have to work twice as hard to gather intelligence. I can't sugar-coat this: you screwed up." His tone was harsh, but there was a fatherly quality in it.

Evelyn stared at the doctor with her chin jutting out. She opened her mouth slightly as if to give an angry retort, but then closed it again. Instead, she turned without saying a word and stormed back into the open garage. She punched the button for the external door and swung a leg over the gleaming red sport bike. The motorcycle whined, then roared to life and Evelyn rocketed out of the garage and off into the night without a second look back.

Ryan watched her go and fought the urge to jump in the Cherokee and give chase. Everything Dr. Webster had said was true, but Ryan felt for Evelyn nonetheless. She revered and respected the doctor, both for the man he was and for the things he had done for her. He knew it couldn't have been easy to endure such a reprimand.

Dr. Webster shook his head and pushed the button to lower the garage door. He trudged off to the infirmary.

"Don't you think on it." Ruby said as she wrapped the vampire bite on Ryan's forearm. "She'll come back. She always does."

"But didn't that seem a little harsh to you?" Ryan asked.

Ruby thought for a moment. "Maybe a touch. But the Doc has made it his job to keep Ev safe. He always gets a mite cranky when she puts herself in danger."

"That happen a lot?"

Ruby laughed. "Just about as often as she can. She's a wild one, no debatin' that."

Before Ryan could ask anything more, Tom stepped through the exterior wall at the same time as Daniel strode through the normal entrance. Dr. Webster emerged from the infirmary to greet them, and they all gathered around the lounge area in the middle.

"Tell me it's not as bad as all that." The doctor pleaded.

"Where is Evelyn? I know you think she made a mistake, but her instincts were correct. We would not have known about the crate without her." Daniel asked.

"Evelyn's out." Dr. Webster said coldly. "What did you find?"

"It's as bad as all that." Tom replied. "Hess had his people on it before we even got there. And we're fast. Whatever was in that crate, it's important."

"But you couldn't tell what it was?" Ryan asked. He felt like he had a stake in this, like that crate had become his personal responsibility.

Daniel shook his head. "They were taking it away just as we arrived. We know nothing more about its contents than you do. However, we have more immediate concerns." He looked Ryan right in the eye, his purple irises deadly serious. "Grayle was at the docks overseeing the recovery. We heard him speaking to one of the others and..."

"And what?" Ryan demanded.

Tom took over. "Hess has taken this as a preemptive strike against their operation, and thanks to Evelyn's rather distinct calling card, he knows it was us. He's moved up his timetable...for the crate, for everything, and he's let Grayle off the leash to-"

"To kill me." Ryan finished

"Bingo." Tom replied.

Silence fell and Ryan felt a prickle on the back of his neck. He didn't like the thought of hundreds of vampires and who knows what else lurking out there and waiting for him, but he _really_ didn't like the thought of one of the most deadly monsters and prolific killers in the country out for his blood. Ryan knew this day would come, but he thought he had time, he thought he'd have mastered the wolf. He thought he'd be ready.

Dr. Webster chewed his lip. "Ryan, how are you coming with the transformation?"

Ryan shook his head. "I'm not. I can't do...anything. It's like I've hit a wall and I don't know how to get over it."

"Alright." He replied. "Not ideal, but we can work with it. Daniel, set him up with a couple mags of the silver rounds. Ruby...we've got to hide him from both Hess' psychics and Grayle."

Ruby smiled. "I think I can conjure up something."

"Good." Webster replied. "I'll call in Miles and we'll see if we can't figure out where that crate was headed. If you're alright with it Tom, I'm going to need you abroad for a while. Go back to the docks and stow away on the next of Hess' ships leaving the pier. We don't know what was in that crate, but if we keep a very close eye on his shipping lines, we might be able to get some intel we can actually use. I'm sorry to send you away like this on such short notice, but-"

Tom nodded his incorporeal head. "We need it. I understand. And it _has_ been a long time since I've been to Africa. I guess I'll see you all in a month or two."

They said their goodbyes to Tom and he turned and walked back through the wall.

The doctor turned to Ryan. "Ryan, this is vitally important: Grayle knows you survived and he knows you're with us, but as far as we can tell, that's all the information he has. With Ruby's help, it'll stay that way. We have no reason to believe he knows where you live or go to school or who your friends are, but he does know about this place so it's the first place he'll check. _Stay away_. Go to your family, go to your friends, but do not come back here until we call you, okay?"

Ryan nodded. The group dispersed to fulfill their assigned duties and Daniel motioned for Ryan to follow him. They crossed the ground floor of the warehouse and climbed the steps to the room above the infirmary. Daniel pushed open the door and Ryan gasped.

Packed into the tiny room were weapons, dozens upon dozens of them hanging in rows from floor to ceiling. One wall held nothing but handguns of every imaginable shape and size, along with neatly stacked, loaded magazines. The other wall held dozens of automatics, ranging from the small submachine guns like Evelyn had used, all the way up to massive assault rifles. The far wall was split into two sections: one held an array of shotguns with everything from black tactical pump-actions to sawed-off double-barreleds with wooden stocks. The second section displayed countless knives and bladed weapons of various length and shape.

Daniel rifled through the magazines of ammunition on the pistol side and found the one he was looking for. He held out his hand.

"The 1911." Daniel said.

Ryan produced the Colt from his pocket and handed it to Daniel. The giant of a man pulled out the unused bullets from the gun and replaced them with the ones from the other magazine, silver-tipped and shining.

"So werewolves _are_ killed by silver. I guess Universal Studios got something right after all."

Daniel nodded. "Silver is a powerful substance. Many creatures of the occult are vulnerable to it. You are no exception. You can still be harmed, and indeed, killed, by conventional weapons or ammunition, but any silver that breaks the skin will cause you unimaginable pain and, if the wound is enough, take your life. Silver also inflicts the only wounds that do not heal when you turn back to human."

"What you're saying is don't sleep with this thing under my pillow _or_ in my kennel." Ryan asked, gesturing to the Colt.

"That is precisely what I am saying. I will not lie to you, Ryan, your chances of successfully fighting Grayle while you are still in human form are slim indeed. It is likely you will not even hear him coming. However, the doctor wishes you to be prepared, and I agree." He handed the gun back to Ryan.

"Have you ever killed a werewolf?" Ryan asked.

"Yes." Daniel replied.

"How did you do it?"

"With much difficulty." He said gravely. "Now I believe Ruby needs to speak with you."

Ruby's workspace was on the second level, past the workout equipment and clothing storage. It looked more like a smaller lounge area, with its three squashy armchairs and worn wooden coffee table. The armchairs were surrounded on three sides by two gigantic, over-laden bookcases and a large armoire full of bizarre and exotic ingredients. The remaining, open side looked out onto the ground floor of the warehouse.

She was busy at work when Ryan arrived, and her wreath of pouches and jewelry swung slowly from her neck as she measured and combined ingredients.

"Have a seat." Ruby said kindly. "I've still got some mojo to work yet."

"What is all of this?" Ryan asked.

"Your basics: graveyard dirt, lodestone, Spanish moss, blood of a sacrificial lamb, Jim Beam Black."

"That's for a spell?" Ryan asked incredulous, as he looked at the bottle of bourbon.

"Not directly." She replied. "But let's just say it gives my magic the little kick in the pants it sometimes needs." Ruby took a swig from the bottle.

"Don't you need a spellbook? Or do you have them all memorized?"

She shook her head and her wiry gray hair stuck out at even wilder angles. "The first thing you gotta understand about magic is that there ain't no spells anymore, leastwise no incantations. The spoken spells were used for the heavy-duty stuff, and that knowledge has been gone for centuries. This magic, the magic my mama taught me, it ain't quite so flashy, but it gets the job done. It's mostly just mixin' the right ingredients and knowin' the right symbols."

"If all it takes is the right knowledge, how come more people don't do it?" Ryan asked.

"If I gave you the recipe and all the ingredients to make me a soufflé, could you do it?"

"Probably not." He replied.

"How come?"

"Because soufflés are hard. They're complicated and if you make one mistake, the thing is ruined."

"Exactly. Difference is, you burn a soufflé, you're out a dessert. You make a mistake with magic, you're out an appendage or two. You want to tussle with the forces of the natural world, you gotta either be brilliant or crazy."

"Which one are you?"

She winked again. "Depends on which one of my ex-husbands you ask."

Ryan smiled.

"Now this one here," Ruby said as she produced a bracelet of thin, tightly woven fibers, "this'll do to conceal you. Old Tony Hess' got an army of psychics and sorcerers usin' all manner o' mojo to track you down, and this little doodad ought to hide you from whatever he's usin'. Just don't get it near an open flame...unless of course you want your first-born to come out with horns and claws."

"That doesn't sound so bad." Ryan joked.

"Cept it wouldn't be coming outta your sweetheart, it'd be coming outta you."

"Yikes."

"Now, this bracelet ain't gonna last forever. I swear I had some devil's claw root somewhere, but now I can't find it, so I had to cut a few corners with the ingredients. Lucky for you I'm just brilliant enough to have done it. It's gonna start frayin' and comin' apart after a few days, but I reckon we'll have this sorted long before that happens. And this one," she continued as she pulled the leather drawstrings on a small cloth pouch she had just added ingredients to, "should mask your scent from any werewolves. That's the fastest way they can track you, by smell, so you keep this 'round your neck and stay far away from this place, you should be alright."

"Thank you so much, really." Ryan said as he slipped the tiny pouch around his neck and dropped it down the front of his shirt.

Ruby waived her hand dismissively. "It's my job. I don't want to see that handsome face of yours get ripped to shreds any more'n you do. Same as I told you when we first met: 'round here we protect our own. Now get outta here and don't you come back."

"Thanks again." Ryan said as he rose from the chair and turned to leave. "One more thing, do you have any idea where Evelyn might have gone?"

Ruby gave a sly smile and began to scoop her potion ingredients back into their small glass bottles. "Matter of fact, I do."

***

The night air sent a biting chill through Ryan's body as he swung the car door closed behind him. Autumn was slowly passing into winter, and although tonight the sky was clear and the breeze was slight, the iciness hung still in the air.

Ruby had sent him to an old observatory a few miles out of town, stuck on the edge of a nearby mountain. It had been built by the university in the fifties, but had since been shut down due to lack of funding. No serious attempts had been made to reopen or revitalize the building, and it had sat empty and unused since the college had pulled out all the equipment and boarded up the doors nearly twenty years ago. It was the sort of place that most people knew about, but no one ever visited. At this elevation it was too cold to have parties there and too far from town for the vagrants to stake a claim, so it had remained largely untouched. According to Ruby, this was where Ryan was most likely to find Evelyn.

The high white walls of the building gleamed pale blue in the starlight. The raised dome of the observatory itself stood out like a beacon amongst the dark, swaying pine trees that surrounded it. The windows on the building that weren't boarded up were dark and foreboding, and Ryan doubted that Evelyn would be in there; not with a view like this.

The entire city stretched out before him in a bright latticework of twinkling yellow and orange lights. Even at this time of night, headlights and taillights still dotted the crisscrossing streets and snaked between skyscrapers. The roar of the city was muted and distant. In fact the only real noise was that of branches swaying and brushing against one another, which sounded to Ryan like waves of a placid sea breaking upon a rocky shore.

He found the red motorcycle parked near the wide double doors of the building. The doors however, were still padlocked with a heavy chain, so Ryan made his way around the outside of the building until he found her.

She was standing on a cobblestone terrace that jutted away from the building and hung out over the side of the mountain. The steep slope fell away beneath them with dense trees covering the ground all the way down to the base. The trees stood tall on either side, but a swath had been cut directly in front of the terrace to give an unobstructed view of the city.

The breeze picked up momentarily and Evelyn's hair flicked and danced upon the wind. She stared out over the city as she reached up to move the hair from her face.

"I suppose I have Ruby to thank for you showing up." She said, not shifting her gaze from the lights below.

"Does that mean you're glad I'm here?"

"I doubt it, but I guess that depends on _why_ you're here. If you want to chew me out for botching the operation or nearly getting you killed, you better have brought the Colt with you cause I'm not in the mood."

"I figured." Ryan replied. "But no, that's not why I'm here at all. I don't blame you for what happened. Daniel doesn't either, he defended you. He said we wouldn't have the intel we do if not for what you did. And he's right. I'm here because I can't go back to the warehouse...and because I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"What do you mean you can't go back?"

"Aaron Grayle is off the chain and he's after me. I've got amulets and bracelets and doohickeys, but I can't hang around the one place he knows I'm likely to go."

Evelyn sighed. "Because of me..."

"No. Well yeah. But it was going to happen sooner or later. I don't blame you at all."

"And pretty soon you won't be able to. After he kills you and it's my fault."

"Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence," Ryan replied, "but this has got nothing to do with you...and I'm not here to talk about it. Like I said, I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"I'm fine. That wasn't the first time I've been yelled at."

"Can't say I'm surprised."

"And what would surprise you?" Evelyn asked as she turned to face him, her eyes gleaming in the night.

"The truck fireball was a pretty good start." He replied.

A small smile played across her downturned lips.

"Is that why you're never cold? The whole fire thing?" Ryan continued.

"It's not a fire thing." She replied.

"It looked like a fire thing."

"It's a temperature thing. The white coats call it pyrokinesis. The human mind can't just create fire, but it can...I can...agitate the molecules, raise the temperature of things. Do that to a gas tank and you get-"

"A fire thing." Ryan finished.

"A fire thing." Evelyn agreed.

"Can you change things the other way? Decrease temperatures?"

She shook her head. "Some people can raise temperatures, some people can lower them. No one person can do both."

Silence fell between them. Ryan stepped to the edge of terrace and rested his hands on the waist-high stone wall. Evelyn joined him. The breeze picked up, then died down. Ryan shivered, Evelyn remained still.

Ryan took a deep breath. "We almost died tonight. Like, four times. And I was terrified. When we were in the trailer, I could barely move. Tell me it gets easier."

Evelyn stared out over the city and remained silent for what felt like a very long time. Finally, she spoke.

"When I was a kid, I was prone to night terrors...really horrible nightmares that it was almost impossible to wake up from." She began quietly. "One night, when I was five years old, I had a bad one. The worst one. Nobody knew it at the time, but my brain wasn't the kind of thing you wanted to threaten and trap, even on a subconscious level. The whole house was up in flames in a matter of seconds. My parents had barely woken up by the time the smoke had filled their room; then it filled their lungs. I didn't even hear their screams, I was still trapped in the night terror. When I did wake up, I thought I was still dreaming. Furniture, stuffed animals, my whole bedroom engulfed by fire.

"Then when I was twelve, I got found out by a group of backwoods fanatics who chased me for two weeks over three states. Last year I got cut off from Daniel during a job and got myself captured by a mid-level alchemist. His vampires chewed on me for three days before I escaped." She took a deep breath. "So no, it doesn't get easier. It gets harder. Every day you run into something more terrifying than you saw yesterday. Every day they keep throwing scarier crap your way. I know that wasn't in the recruitment brochure, but that's the way it is."

"How do you deal?" Ryan asked.

"Some...a lot...don't. They give in or give up or get killed."

"That's not what I meant. How do _you_ deal?"

She sighed. "Blowing stuff up helps. And I owe a lot to Doc, too. But I decided a long time ago that if this life is going to kill me, the one thing I'm going to make sure I do is go down swinging. Doctor Webster yells at me for being impulsive and over-aggressive, but the truth is if I ever slow down, I'm afraid I might not start up again. I've outrun the fear and the padded walls for this long, and I'm not out of breath yet."

As she finished the heat from her skin grew almost unbearable to Ryan, whose unprotected hand rested a few inches from hers. They stood for a moment in silence.

Ryan wanted to tell Evelyn he was sorry about what had happened to her parents. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't her fault, and that she deserved a better life than she had gotten. He wanted to tell her she didn't need to carry around this weight on her shoulders, and that he wanted to be there to help. Still, no matter how much he wanted it, Ryan simply could not find the words.

Instead, he acted. Without thinking, or perhaps, without _over_ thinking, Ryan's hand moved slowly, deliberately onto Evelyn's. Her slender fingers were dry and soft and very warm. After a moment, his heart racing, Ryan squeezed her fingers and tried to infuse into that squeeze every ounce of compassion and gratitude he felt for Evelyn. And she squeezed back.

The tiny embrace felt so good and so right that at first Ryan didn't even notice the temperatures Evelyn's skin was reaching. In fact, Ryan's mind didn't register the pain until her hand became unbearably hot and he, simply on instinct, had to recoil.

"I'm sorry." She said, embarrassed. "I can't really control it, and I don't much notice it, so if I hurt you..."

"Not at all." Ryan said softly.

The wind picked up again and Ryan couldn't help the shiver that rattled through him. Evelyn slid closer to him, as close as she could without touching him. Their fingers too, though no longer intertwined, sat within millimeters of each other as they rested on the white stone of the balcony. Ryan felt the radiating heat that pulsed off her in waves and he let it envelop him. They stared out into the night and over the city they had chosen to defend with their lives. Tonight however, the two teenagers weren't thinking about that. They weren't thinking about the horrors that no doubt awaited them in the coming days, they weren't thinking about the pain they would probably be asked to endure, nor the plans and plots they would have to foil using nothing but blood and sweat. Instead, they were thinking about the starlight, the midnight blue of the trees, and the pale yellow of the sleeping city.

No words passed between them. They stood so close that there wasn't room for anything else. And that's how they stayed.

### Chapter 17

As the days passed, the fear grew. Webster had assured Ryan that they'd have discovered Hess' plan in a matter of days. It had been almost a week.

Ryan had lived in nearly constant fear. He found himself checking over his shoulder whenever he entered a building. He checked the backseat of his car before getting into it. He double and triple-checked door and window locks before going to bed, and most nights he couldn't get to sleep unless he also wedged a chair beneath the doorknob.

To make matters worse, Ruby's prediction had come true: the investigation into Hess' operation was taking longer than expected and the bracelet was beginning to crumble. Interwoven strands came apart like seconds clicking down on a timer until the inevitable explosion. Ruby hadn't had the best ingredients in the first place, and when the bracelet first started to come apart Ryan had called her to ask about repairs. She had used the last of even her makeshift materials to fashion the bracelet Ryan now wore, and she had nothing left with which to fix it. She had promised Ryan that she would scour the countryside and the black markets for more ingredients, but so far her search had turned up nothing. With each update and voicemail she left, her tone seemed to become more and more desperate.

There was nothing he could do to help Ruby or Dr. Webster and the others, so Ryan was doing his best to keep his mind occupied with other things. He was not succeeding.

Training had become almost impossible. Not only was Ryan unable to focus, he was too afraid to close his eyes for more than a few seconds at a time. He was making no progress with the wolf, now when he needed it the most. Ryan knew all he could do was wait, impatient and on-edge, for either Ruby or the others to come up with something to save his life.

Tonight he was waiting at Eli's house, and the company was going a long way towards lifting his spirits. Still, his friends had a hard time talking about anything other than his imminent doom.

"So you're like 'strapped' now?" Eli asked.

"What?"

"The gun, where is it?"

"It's in my car."

"What?" Eli demanded. "You're caught in the middle of some supernatural version of _The Wire_ , you've got a bloodthirsty monster on your tail, and you leave your piece in the _car_?"

"Tell me you at least 'keeps one in the chamber'..." Vanessa added with a smile.

Ryan rolled his eyes. "Not like I can shoot it straight anyway."

"Yeah, we've played enough _Halo_ to know that for a fact." Eli replied.

"Look," Ryan began, "I'm just trying to kill time until either the warehouse guys figure out a way to keep me alive, or Grayle tracks me down and eats me."

"What do you think he'd taste like?" Eli asked Vanessa.

She gave him an appraising glance. "Chicken?"

"Hamburger?" Eli ventured. "Tofu?"

"Well if you are what you eat, that would make Ryan what, a gigantic 2AM bowl of Lucky Charms?" Vanessa asked with a smile.

"I'm glad you're all having so much fun with my inevitable and gory demise."

"Well, laughter _is_ the best medicine." Eli pointed out.

"I don't think that applies to being ripped limb from limb." Ryan retorted.

"I guess we'll find out." Eli replied with a smile. "Come on, you need to relax. You've got your magic jewelry, which is doing wonders to bring out your eyes, if I might add. There's nothing to worry about, let's play."

The game was Blind Man's Bluff, a group favorite, and everyone put their antes into the pot as the rain clattering against the basement windows began to subside. Vanessa dealt a card to each of them and they reached into the middle of the table to pick it up.

As Ryan extended his hand to pick up his card, he felt a tug and then heard a snap. He looked down and saw his wrist bare. The protective bracelet had caught on the corner of the table and had finally broken. Ryan was exposed.

He looked up at his friends, horror written across his face, and he raised his wrist to show them what had happened. The terrible truth dawned on Vanessa and Eli almost simultaneously.

All three dove to the floor in unison, and were disappointed. The woven bracelet had come apart into hundreds of different strands that were scattered all over the small area of floor. Ryan knew that even if they could somehow collect the materials and fix the bracelet, he had now been out in the open for almost half a minute. He didn't know how long it took for someone to psychically track him, but he didn't think it was very long.

"What do we do?" Vanessa asked, doing her best to keep the edge of panic out of her voice.

"You've got to get out of here." Eli said.

Ryan shook his head. "If they show up here and find just you guys, you'll get hurt. We've got to stick together. If they do find me, they can have me and maybe they'll leave you guys out of it."

"We're not letting you give yourself up for us." Vanessa said. "Get out of here now. We can handle it if anybody shows up."

Ryan looked at her. "No. You can't."

"Well then what's your plan?" Eli asked.

"We'll go to the warehouse. They might be tracking me, but at least they'll think twice about attacking us there."

"Good enough for me." Eli agreed.

They crossed the basement and clambered up the narrow stairs as quickly as they could. They reached the top and Ryan put his hand on the doorknob when everything suddenly went dark.

Ryan blinked twice in the blackness and his eyes slowly began to adjust. Hazy contour and shape began to emerge from shadow as his eyes grew more accustomed to the lack of electric lighting. He knew it was too much of a coincidence: they had found him.

Vanessa had instinctively grabbed his arm. He turned around to his two best friends and put a finger to his lips. They crept back down the stairs as quietly as they could and stayed huddled together in the darkness.

Not a sound reached their ears besides their own ragged breathing, though each heard their own heartbeats as clearly and loudly as a bass drum. The water heater in the far corner of the basement gave off a low hum, and the midnight breeze whistled through trees beyond the windows set high in the wall, but Ryan heard none of it. His ears were strained for any sound in the house above them, any footfall or scrape or squeaking stair. Eli's mother and sisters were out at a movie, and so the three were alone in the house. At least Ryan hoped they were alone.

Ryan knew the basement like the back of his hand: where the couch and chairs were relative to the TV, where the fridge stood, where the washing machine was, where the water heater sat. He was more comfortable here than any other place in the world but tonight, this room was his enemy. The shadows seemed darker, the corners, deeper. Dim orange light from the street lamp outside made its way through the windows but did not begin to penetrate the darkness around them.

They were in the middle of the room in the center of the pale halo of lamplight. The light made them feel safe, or as safe as they could feel, but Ryan knew it also left them much more visible. He took Vanessa by the hand and led his two friends out of the light and into one of the corners. He was dreading walking into that corner; he knew better than they did the evils that shadows could hide. Ryan, however, saw no other option.

They crept into the corner furthest from the basement door and the steps that led up to it, but it didn't feel nearly far enough. The wind had picked up and it rattled the windows in their panes, masking the sounds of anyone approaching the house. Ryan knew however, that what was coming for them would not make a sound. It could slip into the house and make itself a pina colada and they'd never hear a thing. It could be in the room and they wouldn't hear it. None of that stopped Ryan from listening as hard as he possibly could.

Their vantage point wasn't ideal. Crouching in the corner meant they had a perfect view of the basement door, but the windows were on the wall above them, which made it impossible to watch both places at once. Ryan could only hope that if Grayle or whatever else was after him came through the window, some sound would betray their entrance. Otherwise they could be dragged out the window and off into the darkness.

The power had been cut only seconds after Ruby's bracelet had broken and the spell had faded away. Since then however, nothing had happened. Ryan couldn't help but wonder: if Grayle was outside the house, or even if he was in the house, what was he waiting for? They had no defenses and no way to protect themselves, and they were already entombed: trapped in a dank concrete hole. For the briefest of moments, Ryan allowed himself to hope: maybe it was a coincidence, maybe they did have enough time to make it out to the Jeep. He felt the burden of fear lighten.

A sudden crash and shattering of glass from above them sent all three teenagers onto their hands and knees trying to cover each others' heads. The glass however, had not come from the windows, but rather the flickering orange streetlamp. The bulb that hung twenty feet above the ground had been smashed and the murky darkness was turned instantly to utter and complete black.

The wind had died down. The house was still and everything was silent. Ryan gripped Vanessa's hand, closed his eyes, and waited for the end to come in whichever way Grayle chose. He waited.

And he waited. Nothing happened. Not for thirty seconds, not for a minute. Ryan opened his eyes and, although the blackness and silence were still in place, as far as he could tell, he was alive. Vanessa's grasp on his hand had never faltered and both their palms were slick with a cold sweat. Then the front door of the house squeaked open.

It was a sound that could have been a hundred other things, but Ryan was sure of what he had heard. There was no shuffling on the hardwood floors above them, no footfalls on the kitchen tile, but Ryan knew they were no longer alone in the house. He knew there was only one thing that moved absolutely silently. It wasn't a vampire or a psychic, it was Grayle.

The seconds dragged on and the silence seemed to close in on them from all sides. They waited, in the blackness, for death: a killing blow that could come at any moment. The seconds ticked into minutes, and the minutes became a blur. Ryan didn't know how long they had crouched there with their legs and ankles burning from the strain, but none of them dared move an inch, save Vanessa's terrified trembling.

His mind started to convince him that he had not heard the door open at all: that there was nothing in the house and that they were completely safe. Ryan wanted desperately to believe, but he couldn't. Not without proof.

His legs and back screamed in protest as Ryan stood up straight for the first time in what felt like hours. Vanessa tried to pull him back down, but Ryan slipped his hand from hers and began to pick his way across the inky black sea of the basement floor. He reached the wooden stairs and crept slowly upward.

A sudden creak behind him and Ryan felt the adrenaline explode through his body. He whirled around, ready to fight with nothing but his bare hands if he had to. His heart hammered in his chest as he realized that it was not an enemy behind him, but his friends.

Ryan took his voice as low and soft as it could possibly go, the faintest shadow of a whisper. "No."

"The bastard's in my house. I'm not going to sit around in my own basement and wait to be killed. At least let him kill me in the living room." Eli whispered back.

Ryan opened his mouth again but Vanessa stopped him. She was still shaking from head to toe, but her gaze was steely and she spoke through teeth clenched tight in fear. "Just open the damn door."

He didn't like it, but he couldn't argue without wasting more time and risking being heard. Ryan wanted to go out there in order to save his friends, not serve them up on a plate. They didn't understand what was beyond that door, he did.

Ryan's hand groped for the heavy doorknob and closed around it after a few blind moments. He turned it as slowly as he could, but nothing could stop the gentle scrape of the latch retracting. He took a deep breath and tried fruitlessly to calm his nerves, which felt like they were bouncing around at a mile a minute. Ryan pushed the basement door open and stepped out.

The door opened onto the kitchen, which appeared deserted. There was more light here as the sliver of moon that shone through the windows was caught and reflected by the stark white tile and countertops of Eli's kitchen. They fanned out, keeping as low and as quiet as they could.

Ryan eased open the china cabinet and pulled out a thin silver steak knife. He hoped the same rules applied to silver knives as did silver bullets, but he would have felt much better with the Colt in his hand rather than a four-inch dining utensil.

Vanessa pulled open a countertop drawer and withdrew a small flashlight that spread a feeble beam not more than a few feet in front of them.

Eli rummaged through the little league bag that one of his sisters had left on the kitchen table. His face was triumphant in the light of Vanessa's beam as he produced a wooden baseball bat from the bag. Vanessa rolled her eyes.

_This is insane_. She mouthed to them. Ryan had to agree.

_Then go back downstairs_. Eli replied.

_Not likely_. She scoffed silently.

Eli choked up on the bat and Ryan handed Vanessa another silver knife. He figured if they were going to mount this pathetic offensive, he at least wanted to give everybody an equally pitiful chance.

They fell in behind Ryan and Vanessa swept the beam to and fro in front of them. The front door of the house stood ajar and spilled moonlight over the threshold. They moved slowly into the living room and the light bounced over couch and lamp and plant and revealed nothing that wanted them dead. There was only one floor of the house they hadn't checked, and the staircase that rose into complete shadow did nothing to bolster their courage.

They edged up the stairs one at time and strained their ears for any foreign sound. Even with the flashlight, the darkness was so oppressive that an attack could come at any moment, from any side, and the three knew they'd never see it coming.

On the upstairs landing, Ryan gripped the puny knife tightly as he eased open the door to the bedroom Eli's sisters shared. Vanessa's light fell over beds and clothes and stuffed animals, but revealed no monster.

They knew now that if the thing was here, it was in either the master bedroom or Eli's room. The three crowded around his mothers' bedroom door and took a collective deep breath. Ryan's hand fell to the doorknob and he began to turn it.

A noise sounded from the door behind them. Eli swung around and delivered a savage kick to his own bedroom door, which burst open, rattling on its hinges. Something huge and dark blocked out the moonlight streaming through the open window and then vanished in an instant. Ryan rushed to the sill and saw the monstrous shadow streak off into the night.

"Jerk was in my room!" Eli exclaimed.

Ryan stared at the spot in the street where he had last seen the shadow and he felt a cold anger begin to rise inside of him. Grayle could have killed them at any time, but he hadn't. Instead the werewolf had toyed with them. He had allowed his entrance to be heard. He had made the noise in Eli's bedroom on purpose. Grayle was playing with his food and Ryan was sick of the game. He wanted to know why.

"Screw this." Ryan muttered, and he put a hand on either side of the open window and launched himself out of it. He didn't fall more than eight or ten feet and he hit the soft, wet grass and rolled to absorb the impact. In a flash Ryan was on his feet and sprinting full-tilt after the terrifying creature that wanted him dead. Ryan would have answers, even if it killed him.

The rain started up again and it wasn't long before he was caught in a torrential downpour. He didn't care.

Ryan ran as hard and as fast as he had ever run in his life. He knew there was no way he'd ever catch up to a werewolf, but anger and stubbornness spurned him on as he raced through the freezing night. If he didn't end this tonight, Ryan knew that they'd only have to go through it all over again. He didn't know how long Grayle would pick and poke at him and his friends before getting bored and killing them. He didn't know how long he would have to wait patiently just to die. Now that Grayle had the scents and locations of Ryan's friends, he didn't know how many of them the werewolf would kill, just for the fun of it, before he got to Ryan. He ran faster.

He was sick of the waiting, the wondering, and most of all, the worrying. Ryan had known he didn't have a great chance at survival, but the one thing that had kept him going, kept him training and working and hoping, was the possibility that Grayle might spare his friends and family. Ryan saw now that wasn't in the cards. Aaron Grayle would come after them all, one by one, and emotionally torture Ryan to the brink of madness, simply because he could. Ryan tore after Grayle, the wind roaring in his ears, his shoes slapping wet pavement, because he knew that if he didn't, the people he loved most in the world would meet a terrible fate. It was the only thought in his mind: the singular purpose for which he ran and, at this moment, even existed.

The first thing to change was the sound of the hoarse lungfuls of air being sucked in. Ryan felt a second wind come on, as though he could now hold more air than before. Moments later he realized it was true.

His sopping wet shoes were flung off his feet at opposite angles, whipping water droplets in all directions as they spun off into the darkness. Ryan stumbled and nearly came to a crashing halt, but recovered and kept on running. He ran and he ran and he ran and completely ignored the outside world and the things happening in it. Ryan ignored the sensation of a hundred new sounds opening up to him. He ignored the fact that the tree-lined suburban streets were now whipping past him as if he were driving at freeway speeds. He ignored the bizarre change in his sight that made the night around him not brighter but somehow clearer. Ryan kept running even until he was on all fours and racing through the streets as fast as a cheetah.

What finally gave him pause was the sense of smell. The realization that he had transformed into the werewolf sent him tumbling to the ground. The sense of smell was almost overwhelming: Ryan knew instantly what each of the houses on the block had served for dinner. He knew which houses had kids and which had pets and whether the families preferred turkey burgers to hamburgers. He knew, like a giant neon arrow in the sky above him, which way Grayle had gone.

The smells, however, were the last thing on Ryan's mind. He looked down at his massive, hairy paws and tried desperately to discover whether his mind was still his own, or if the wolf had taken over once again. But it was Ryan thinking. And he knew it was him thinking he was thinking. He curled his thick fingers into a giant, hairy fist and then back out again. He ran his rough tongue over massive teeth, each with a razor's edge. He used muscles he'd never before used to rotate his ears in almost every direction. There had been no pain to the transformation at all; that he would have noticed. Somehow, Ryan had transformed into the wolf and somehow, he was still Ryan.

He didn't know how he had done it, but he knew why. Daniel's words floated through Ryan's mind. A man needed two things to weather a storm: singularity of purpose, and friends by his side. For Ryan, those two things were one and the same.

He raised his newly-formed snout to the air and caught Grayle's musky scent. Ryan launched himself from the pavement and leapt ten feet down the road in a single jump. He looked behind him from the spot he had just left, and he looked down the dark road before him. Without another thought he darted off into the night at full speed and watched as trees and houses became blurs once again.

The trail zigzagged through six neighborhoods and Ryan traversed them in less than three minutes. The rain was pounding even harder now and although the coarse gray fur that covered his body kept him comfortably warm, breath streamed out of his long nostrils in wispy clouds of vapor. Even with this nose, the rain was too much: he was losing the scent. Ryan circled a few of the nearby blocks but ended up at the same intersection. The trail was strongest here, but Ryan couldn't tell which way it pointed him next. He stood in the rain-swept intersection for a long time, but discovered no more clues.

He had lost his quarry, but Ryan was far from discouraged: now he had what he needed to fight back. Grayle could come after him any time he wanted; Ryan knew he'd be ready. The monster could go after Ryan's friends or family or even the warehouse, Ryan would be there in a flash. He knew he still didn't have the experience he needed to truly defeat Grayle, but the wolf was mastered, the enemy had disappeared, and that was good enough for one night.

### Chapter 18

He pulled out of traffic and onto the first side street that led to Mockingbird. He was driving ten over, as usual, but today it felt entirely too slow. He had felt the speed and strength of the wolf, and he had felt it without seatbelts or steering columns. Ryan loved the Cherokee like a dear friend, but nothing he had ever experienced could quite compare to the rush he had felt the night before.

He had been able to revert to his human form at will when he had arrived back at Eli's house. With a little patience and a lot of focus, Ryan had then been able to transform again, this time right in front of them. Vanessa had seen it before and even though Eli knew it was coming, it didn't stop his eyes from getting wide and a noticeable shiver running down his spine.

Ryan texted Evelyn and Dr. Webster the good news, and then spent most of the night practicing in his securely locked bedroom. It still required intense focus, but the hours upon hours Ryan had spent perfecting the meditation techniques had given him all the skills he needed. Ben, it turned out, had been more helpful than Ryan had given him credit for. Soon Ryan was able to trigger a smooth, painless, and nearly instantaneous transformation.

The next day was Friday and Ryan had never had a more difficult time concentrating on class. In fact, after the first few periods, he gave up entirely. Instead he devoted the rest of the day to staring out classroom windows and mentally re-living the previous night and, more than a few times, the night at the observatory.

Miles called him halfway through his lunch hour: they had caught wind of a party that night at a swanky downtown hotel. This particular hotel was owned by one Anthony Hess, who was also throwing the shindig. Parties like this for the city's social elite were a weekly occurrence, but Hess parties were the stuff of society page legend. He hadn't thrown one in almost two years, and it was expected that tonight's event was being put on to announce a major new development by Hess' company. The misfits of 4197 had decided that the timing of the shipments, the crate, the party, and the attack on Ryan were all too coincidental: the party was important, they just didn't know why.

Now that Ryan was able to lend his full talents to the group, he was to be included in the operation that night. Miles didn't go into details about what Ryan's exact role would be, but Ryan didn't give it a second thought. All he wanted was to be in, to do something to repay these people who had given him so much. He didn't care if he was just driving the van.

Mrs. White didn't look up as he entered the warehouse, but he took it as a great step forward in their relationship that she hadn't bothered to pump the shotgun as he entered.

The warehouse was a buzz of activity when Ryan stepped inside, and its occupants were all too busy to acknowledge his presence with more than a wave or a cursory greeting.

Daniel was carrying armloads of electronics and other equipment into the garage. Dr. Webster was poring over a set of over-sized blueprints on the coffee table in the middle of the common area. Ruby and Miles were on the upper level: the sorceress was pulling bags and bundles off of shelves in her cabinets, and the mind-reader was rummaging through the warehouse's cache of clothing. Evelyn was nowhere to be seen.

"Hey." Miles called to Ryan from above. "Front an' center. We gotta get you presentable an' such, from rags to riches."

He climbed the metal stairs two at a time and met Miles in front of the bureaus.

"What are you talking about? I thought we were doing recon..." Ryan asked.

"Best way to figure out what's going on someplace is to be there." Miles replied, and produced a pearly white square of cardstock with expensive-looking silver lettering. "Caught the fancy of one of the catering staff this afternoon. Had her nick it for me." Miles winked. "Don't worry, I didn't use me powers."

Ryan wasn't sure he believed him.

"An invitation? Somebody's actually going to this party? Isn't that kind of like sticking your head in the lion's mouth?" Ryan asked.

"Aye, but this time the thing with the big pointy teeth is on our side! An' not just somebody is going to this soiree mate, you are."

"Grayle knows what I look like. I'll give the whole thing away-"

Miles laughed. "It's gonna be a big party, and Aaron Grayle don't exactly have the social graces to attend, even in human form. The Doc don't think he'll even be there."

"And if he is?"

"What, you think we'd send you in there all alone? We'll be with ya every step of the way, don't fret. Course I'm still tryin' to wrap me mind around how _you_ rate the tux and how _I_ get stuck with the jumpsuit, but I s'pose that's neither here nor there."

Miles produced a black tuxedo from inside one of the armoires. Ryan looked it up and down, with little idea of what he was supposed to be looking at. Junior prom was still months away and even then, Ryan had never planned on going. He had never worn a tuxedo before, and he crossed his fingers that the buttons on rich people clothing worked the same way as on they did on his flannel shirts.

"Lucky for you I know a bloke who's a wonder with a needle an' thread. Got it fitted to you...more or less. It won't be perfect o' course since you weren't at the fitting, but it should look better'n it would have otherwise."

It was simple, elegant, and black. The jacket bore peak lapels with a single button at the sternum. Beneath it was a white shirt with French cuffs and white buttons that looked like just the sort of thing Ryan knew he would probably spill spaghetti sauce on. Draped over the jacket was a sleek black bowtie. In Miles' other hand he held a pair of black dress shoes that bore such a mirror shine as to nearly blind Ryan where he stood. He took a deep, nervous breath. This was not the evening he had been anticipating.

"Don't do much good in me hand." Miles said, extending the hangar to Ryan.

"Not sure it'll do much good on my back, either." Ryan replied.

Ryan's closet at home held exactly one suit, navy blue and off-the-rack, which he had only ever worn to half a dozen weddings and a handful of funerals. He had never been to any fancy parties or high society cotillions. Ryan's Friday nights were usually filled with store-brand Dr. Pepper and cheap take-out in Eli's basement. He didn't know a salad fork from a soup spoon, he wasn't up on world events, and he absolutely hated small talk. Ryan felt like what Miles was asking him was so far out of his wheelhouse, it was in another time zone. Ryan could barely tie a necktie without strangling himself, he knew he'd never survive a bowtie.

"I'm sorry, but this is not going to work. I'm going to stick out like a sore thumb. I've never been to anything like this!"

Miles sighed, then looked him straight in the eye. "Ryan, do ya trus' me?"

"No."

"Well...ya should. You _can_ pull this off, we _will_ have your back, the plan _will_ come off w'out a hitch, you _will_ save the day, get the girl, score the touchdown, break the spell, defeat the villain, triumph for good, and ride off into the sunset. I've no doubt. But I do have a lot lef' to do, so howabout you man up an' dress yourself?"

Ryan sighed and snatched the hangar from Miles' hands, who smiled. He passed Ryan to make his exit, and as he did he turned back.

"Believe you me: in 'bout five minutes, that tux is going to be the last thing on your mind." He winked again and descended the stairs.

Ryan retreated between two of the taller armoires to change clothes and soon he was decked out in the finest threads the supernatural world had to offer. He didn't have much frame of reference on black tie apparel, but he knew at least one thing: it felt good.

He was still hopelessly lost when it came to some of the more delicate aspects of the outfit, so he emerged from the alcove trusting that somewhere in his hundreds of years on the planet, Daniel had learned how to tie a bowtie.

Ryan was about to leave the spare clothing area when he saw the door to Evelyn's bedroom open, and the woman herself emerged. The tuxedo became the last thing on Ryan's mind.

The crimson material clung to every gentle slope of her lithe figure. It was without frills or frippery, and the only interruption to the form of the dress was a single slit in one side that ran from high up on the thigh down to where the material ended at mid-calf. There were no bows or beads, no sequins or stitching; there was the dress and there was the magnificently beautiful girl who inhabited it. Her lips were the same alluring shade of ruby that they had always been, but tonight they matched so perfectly with the dress that they seemed to be made of the same silky material. Her bright green eyes dazzled even in the low light of second floor as she tucked a few stray strands of mahogany hair behind her ear. She gave a wry smile as she looked Ryan up and down before speaking.

"I'm your 'plus one'."

"And then some."

She smiled again and her eyes swept from his face to the rest of him.

"You know, the 'drunk best man' look went out years ago." She replied, nodding to his undone top button and hanging, un-tied bowtie.

Ryan looked down at it. "Not really one of the skills they teach you in public school."

Evelyn rolled her eyes. She reached with deft fingers to his throat and Ryan felt his face flush long before he felt the unnatural heat from her skin. She pulled and tugged and primped for a few moments before brushing her hands down the chest of the jacket and buttoning the single button.

"I suppose we'll have to call that presentable." She said.

Ryan pulled open an armoire door and took a look at himself in the small mirror. Green eyes set beneath tousled, dark blonde hair and above a perfectly-formed jet black bowtie. He felt hot hands slip onto his and then up to his wrist.

He looked down and watched as Evelyn fastened his cuffs with small cufflinks, glossy black square with a clean, silver border.

"Come on." She said, leading him around the second level to the far side. "I still have to get _my_ accessories."

Evelyn pushed open the door to the armory and Ryan followed her inside. She pulled off the shelf a small, palm-sized silver and black pistol, which she tucked into an equally small holster fastened a few inches up her inner thigh She grabbed another gun, all black, that looked slightly different from all the rest, but she jammed it into her small clutch purse before Ryan could get a proper look at it.

They made their way to the ground floor and Ryan suddenly felt very self-conscious. Ruby was in her duster, Daniel his dark combat pants, and the doctor in his customary shirt with rolled up sleeves and loosened tie. Miles was the only other one in costume, but his was a simple dark-blue janitor's jumpsuit with a baseball cap. All eyes were on Ryan and Evelyn.

"Think they'll pass?" Dr. Webster asked no one in particular. "We just need a couple of flies on the wall, so hopefully they look rich enough to be somebody's spoiled kids."

"They'll do great." Ruby said with an assuring smile on her face.

"Alright." Doc said as he walked over to the coffee table that held the blueprints. "The party is in the penthouse ballroom of the Port Hotel. Our scouting didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary in terms of technological security, but it's a good bet Hess has a few magical or psychic fail-safes in place. Of course the only people that will have to worry about those will be Ryan, Evelyn, and Miles. You three will be the only ones physically in the area."

Ruby stepped forward and placed three small leather bags on the table. "These should mask y'all from most of the basic stuff. I'll have more materials with me in the van, so if you run into anything particular, I can get to workin' on dispellin' it."

Doc nodded. "That's right. Ruby and I will be in the van here." He pointed to the parking garage area on the blueprint. Anything goes wrong, that's your exit. That's everybody's exit. Miles is working the halls around the ballroom, and he's going to give everybody a heads up as soon as he detects any other non-human minds he can't get a read on. Then he falls back to the van." Webster said, looking to Ryan and Evelyn. "Daniel is on the roof, he's your primary back-up if things get hairy." He looked up at Daniel. "You don't move until I give you the go-ahead, no matter how much trouble they're in."

"We _are_ the trouble." Evelyn said with a grin.

"The last thing we need is civilians getting in the middle of this, so Daniel doesn't move unless the civvies are clear or he absolutely has to. I'm running this show from the van downstairs, so everybody make sure you get your earpieces in and tested. Questions?"

Ryan felt like an idiot. "I'm sorry but, what exactly are we supposed to do?"

"Party." Dr. Webster said with a smile. "Mingle, just don't draw attention to yourselves. Hess is probably throwing this thing to announce some big merger or something, but there's got to be another side to it. That means there are going to be just as many paranormal heavy-hitters there as there will be drunk socialites. Evelyn, keep an eye out for faces you recognize. Ryan, pay attention to anybody that looks suspicious. Eavesdrop, pick pockets, do whatever you have to do, this is probably our only shot at gathering intel before Hess makes his move. We clear? Good. Let's go."

Ryan, Evelyn, and Miles each grabbed a bag of protective mojo and stored it away. They all made their way into the garage to one of the white service vans Daniel had been loading. They began to climb in, one after the other, but Evelyn pulled Ryan aside.

"You want to show up to this thing in the van? This is all about appearances, appearances we've got to keep up from the jump. Come on." She grabbed his arm and steered him towards the workbench where she grabbed a set of keys off the pegboard hook.

"Can you drive stick?" She asked as they came to a stop in front of the silvery foreign convertible.

"Are you serious?" Ryan asked, incredulous.

"What, you'd rather take your Jeep?"

"Yeah, kind of."

She rolled her eyes.

"Get in." Evelyn said as she climbed into the driver's seat. Ryan took shotgun.

The engine rumbled to life and Evelyn slid out of the parking space, put the car into gear, and they shot out of the warehouse like a silver bullet from a red brick gun. She drove fast, but carefully. There was no squealing of these tires or swinging around corners like she had with the bike. Ryan felt as though there was a distinct reverence to the way she treated the car.

"You were never going to let me drive, were you?" He asked.

Evelyn smiled. "Nope."

"Then why even offer?"

"I was afraid that if I just jumped behind the wheel, you'd feel emasculated. I wanted to give you at least the illusion of control."

"That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."

Ryan watched as her hands and feet worked the vehicle with the dexterity and expertise of a race car driver. He watched as her hands brushed over the stitched leather of the steering wheel and lingered lovingly over the gearshift.

"What's so special about this car?" He asked.

She ran a hand over the instrument panel and let it rest affectionately on the dash. She took a deep, satisfied breath.

"This is a 1967 Sunbeam Tiger. Do you know what that means?"

Ryan shook his head. "No."

"I didn't either, at least not at first. All I knew was that the earliest memory in my life is of my dad working on this car in our garage. I'm sitting on the steps, eating a popsicle, just watching him work. Bob Seger is on in the background. My dad tries to teach his four year old girl the difference between drum and disc brakes." Another smaller, sadder smile played across her face.

"This car?" Ryan asked.

"This car."

"But I thought you left home after-"

"I did. But as soon as I was old enough to use the Internet I started trying to track down this car. It went to bank auction after my parents died, then through a handful of other owners. I didn't have consistent phone or computer access through all the foster homes I was shipped in and out of, so it took me a long time to track it down. I finally found it, in some podunk town in Wisconsin. That's when I learned why it mattered that this is a 1967 Sunbeam Tiger."  
"Why?"

"Because there aren't many of these things left. Not in the US, anyway. They're not in particularly high demand, and they're not as valuable as other classic cars, but they're rare. This guy in Wisconsin, he didn't want to part with it. At least not for any amount of money that a fourteen year old girl could scrape together."

"So what did you do?"

"What any determined fourteen year old would do: I ran away from home, robbed a couple banks."

"At fourteen?"

"They were small banks. Anyway, Doctor Webster noticed my...activities, somehow figured out what I was after, tracked me down at a little diner a few miles outside of Sioux City, handed me the title and the keys and told me if I wanted to live a better life, I could go with him. Of course I told him to go to hell and I spent the next year or so driving this thing anywhere there was two-lane blacktop. Then one day I got sick of running from nothing and showed up on Doc's doorstep. And I never left."

"Wow." Ryan said quietly.

"I told you," she said after a moment, "I owe him a lot."

They drove the rest of the way into downtown in silence. Evelyn was clearly enjoying being behind this particular wheel, and Ryan didn't want any of his inane small talk to ruin that. He was simply happy watching her be happy.

They arrived at the party as planned: after the initial crowd of guests had already gone through, but when enough stragglers and latecomers remained so that they could blend in.

The original Port Hotel had been one of the city's first skyscrapers and a testament to all things opulent. Over the years however, it had lost both money and structural integrity, until finally it was forced to close its doors. A few years later, the remaining shell had been bulldozed by Hess' company to make way for a newer, fancier, much taller hotel. Almost ten years ago, the rebuilt Port Hotel had opened its doors to the world and become an instant success: far outstripping the other hotels in the city in terms of style, luxury, and price. It had played host to celebrities and dignitaries and a handful of former presidents, and tonight, all the nasty things the supernatural underworld had to offer.

The Tiger came to an abrupt halt in front of the ornate gold doors of the hotel. Valets in matching silver vests came to either side of car and opened the doors. Ryan stepped out into the chilled evening air and turned to find his date with her finger an inch from the valet's nose.

"A nick, a ding, a scratch, a scrape, even a _smudge_ , and I will come to your house while you sleep, take out your eyeballs with an ice cream scoop, and then let you perform your own colonoscopy. Do I make myself clear?"

The valet did nothing but nod, his eyes wide and his hand shaking as he took the keys from Evelyn's begrudging fingers.

The man drove carefully away and Ryan and Evelyn ascended the white marble steps to the front door.

"I'm not sure you have a very firm grasp on the term 'low profile'." He whispered.

"I've just got my priorities straight." She replied under her breath. "The car always comes before the mission. Always."

"And where does your partner fall on that list?"

"You don't want to know."

Ryan produced the ivory invitation from his jacket pocket and doormen in black suits and white gloves pulled open the large glass doors.

The lobby of the Port Hotel managed to strike just the right balance between tasteful and lavish. The floor was made up of seamless squares of white marble, with wide strips of contrasting black marble running around the perimeter as well as around the large, ornate fountain in the center of the room. Placed around the fountain were a smattering of gold-colored couches, low-slung chairs and coffee tables, and off to one side a glossy black grand piano with a fleet-fingered gentleman in his late forties occupying the bench. Two rows of tall white columns ran along either side of the room and led the eye to a ceiling forty feet above the floor. The ceiling itself was made almost entirely of frosted glass and was held together by a grid of intricately carved white wooden beams. The walls were a rich cream color and held golden sconces that cast diffused light on the many tapestries and oil paintings that adorned the walls.

The focal point of the room was the huge fireplace set into the far wall, which housed a large, crackling fire. Hanging above the mantle was an oil painting in an extravagant golden frame the same color as the sconces and furniture. The painting itself was a seascape, with most of the canvas dedicated to the shapes and colors of a choppy, overcast harbor. To one side was a depiction of the city's skyline as it had been in the days of the original Port Hotel. And then, tucked in the opposite corner just above the artist's scrawled signature, Ryan saw a single man in a tiny sailboat. He was trying to steer the craft through the gale of waves and water, but the winds looked so strong and the craft was so small, that he seemed to be completely at the mercy of the vast, primal forces around him. Ryan felt like he could relate.

Evelyn took his arm and they walked through the elegant lobby, doing their best to look like they'd been coming to places like this all their lives. The other arriving partygoers milled around them and gave little notice. They were mostly older people, well-dressed and distinguished men in their sixties with wives wearing shimmering evening gowns in every muted color of the stylish rainbow. There were a few younger people here and there, but almost no one as young as Ryan. These were men in their twenties and thirties with sharp tuxedos and perfectly-styled hair, their arms linked to women in tight dresses and heavy eye shadow. They moved in ambling groups toward the golden elevator doors.

The elevator ride seemed to take a very long time, which made Ryan nervous. He was all too aware that any of the half dozen other people in the steel box with them might be some otherworldly monster. Of course, the thought of being stuck on the highest level of a skyscraper, in an entire room full of such creatures, wasn't much better. The elevator finally dinged and the prosperous patrons filed into the hall, then the ballroom.

### Chapter 19

Cologne. Perfume. Crab and brie phyllo. The high-ceilinged ballroom was even more dazzling than the lobby below. While the rest of the hotel that Ryan had seen so far had been consciously modern, this room cast it all aside in favor of overwhelming, although entirely artificial, old-world charm. Ryan felt as if he had stepped into Versailles itself, and he found himself wondering if this was the sort of place Daniel had spent time in, back in his early five hundreds.

Three of the walls around them were lily-white, with intricate gilt floral patterns covering much of the space. The fourth wall was made entirely of huge, floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a view of the city that almost rivaled that from the observatory. An immense crystal and gold chandelier hung from the ceiling and cast a thousand tiny glares on the polished wooden floors.

Two thirds of the room was covered in meticulously placed and set tables, covered with fine white linen and each bearing a small centerpiece of snow-white orchids. Along the near wall was a long, wooden bar, fully stocked with both drink and wealthy drunkard. The other third of the room was more open, with a string quartet in one corner and a few dozen couples dancing slowly in the center. Two hundred more guests milled about around the edges and amongst the tables or at the bar, talking, socializing, networking.

As he made a cursory assessment of the crowd, Ryan saw nothing that looked suspicious or paranormal, nor did he see Anthony Hess: the man whose face graced the newspaper above the fold at least a few times every month. In fact, everyone looked normal, at least on the outside. Ryan wasn't sure if that made him more comfortable or much, much less.

Evelyn, however, was more observant. She led Ryan out of the entering throng of people and along the edge of the ballroom to an uninhabited section of wall.

"That's the mayor." She hissed.

"So?"

"Don't you watch the news?"

"Not since they started they started rerunning _Seinfeld_ on channel fourteen at the same time."

"It's an election year." She began. "The mayor has been making a big deal about putting an end to the sale and distribution of Vain. He's running the whole 'clean up the city' campaign."

"Has it been working?" Ryan asked.

"Not really, but the city cops are definitely paying more attention to the drug trade, and that's never a good thing for a drug dealer." Evelyn replied.

"And what, you think Hess is going to do something about it? Evelyn, the mayor must go to these things all the time. It'd probably be more suspicious if he _wasn't_ here."

"Maybe so, but I don't like it. It's too close. Keep an eye on him."

"Sure."

Evelyn tapped her ear and spoke a few hushed words into the hidden ear bud receiver.

"Come on." She said after a moment. "Let's mingle."

They walked slowly around the room a few times before beginning to weave their way in between tables. Ryan was trying to keep one eye on where he was going, one eye on the portly mayor, and both ears on the conversations they were passing. So far, none of his senses had detected any red flags.

They stayed at it for almost an hour: taking seats within earshot of full tables, leaning against the bar, even striking up a few innocent conversations themselves. Their efforts, however, turned up nothing. They overheard a great deal of idle babble about the stock market, the mayoral campaign, and college football, but nothing even remotely sanguinary.

Tired and dispirited, Ryan and Evelyn made their way to a pair of seats at an unoccupied table near one corner of the dance floor. The quartet started up a slow waltz; a haunting tune that felt out of place in such a spirited atmosphere, but pleased the ears nonetheless.

"Do you want to dance?" Ryan asked.

"No."

"Oh."

"But I will." Evelyn said after a moment.

"Please, don't do me any favors." Ryan replied.

"No, I mean it's just that I can't dance." She said.

"Finally something the Amazon queen of Route 66 can't do. Not a lot of waltzing going on at truck stops and bank vaults?"

"Your window's closing pretty fast here." She replied irritably.

Ryan smiled and grabbed her by the hand. They didn't stray more than a few feet from the table; the center of the dance floor was the last place they wanted to be. Still, they had their corner and that was more than good enough.

Normally, Ryan would never have suggested something like this. However, dancing was the one thing his bag of romantic tricks actually contained. Vanessa had taken a ballroom class a few years ago and demanded that Ryan practice with her, which he had dutifully done. The waltz was not difficult, and Ryan had managed to retain enough of what he learned. His hand slid around Evelyn's silky waist. They stood still for a moment while Ryan found the beat, and then stepped gingerly into it. Soon Evelyn felt the flow of the dance and the two moved in harmony. For what felt like a very long time, neither of them spoke.

"You know, when I was a little girl-"

"Can I stop you right there? I feel like every time you start a story that way, it ends up being terrifying."

She smiled. "What I was going to say was that I was kind of always looking forward to my high school prom: the pictures, the music, the...theater of it all."

"Just because you don't go to a high school doesn't mean you couldn't go to a high school prom. You're still only seventeen." He smiled. "It wouldn't be that hard to arrange."

Evelyn looked him dead in the eye with an expression somewhere between disbelief and nausea. "Are you joking? I said 'when I was a little girl'. Not now, hell no. I'd rather be torn apart by a bunch of Hess' goons."

"Come to think of it, that'd probably be pretty easy to arrange too."

"All I meant was that I'm glad tonight happened, even though we didn't turn up any useful information."

"Well I'm sorry I didn't get you a corsage."

"Don't worry about it. The nine millimeter goes better with my outfit."

Ryan smiled and let the music wash over him. He had forgotten just for a moment about vampires and werewolves and death and toil and pain. For a few blissful seconds, there was nothing in that room but him, Evelyn, and the music.

He felt her body grow warmer and her fingertips light up with heat in his hand. They pulled, ever so slightly, closer.

The quartet hit their final note and the dance was ended. The spell was broken. In fact, at the end of the number the quartet pulled their instruments from their shoulders and began to pack up. Ryan reluctantly broke contact with Evelyn and the two sat back down at their table. A number of hotel staff began to bustle about and haul into the ballroom a collection of strange parts, sections of a whole that Ryan did not recognize.

In a matter of moments however, the parts had come together to form a raised platform, with half a dozen chairs set upon it and a thin wooden podium at the center with a microphone at its top. The rest of the partygoers took the hint and then took their seats.

When everyone was settled and talking excitedly in hushed voices to one another, the far door to the ballroom swung open and Anthony Hess strode in, his brilliant white smile flashing in the sparkling light of the chandelier. He was tall and handsome and he walked with an easy gait.

He wore a classic black tuxedo that fit his thin frame perfectly. The roundness of the shawl collar was accentuated by the red cummerbund he wore. His hair was salt-and-pepper gray and his eyes were a very pale blue. Hess looked the absolute opposite of the vampires Ryan had seen previously, and he wondered why exactly that was. He wondered what was it about Hess that gave him the control that other vampires lacked. What made him different, and turned him into the master of the bloodlust rather than its slave?

The immortal approached the podium, put his hands on either side, and smiled a movie-star smile. His tone was pleasant and emotive, almost musical.

"My friends and colleagues. Tonight you honor me with your presence. But we are in turn honored by the presence of a few very distinguished guests, and I would be remiss if I did not recognize them as such. Mayor Peck, of course, please join me."

There was a round of applause as the mayor extricated himself from his seat and took another seat on the podium. Hess called a few other noteworthy attendees to join him, each to applause, until one name caught Evelyn's attention.

The man was short and thin and was bald except for the tufts of hair above either ear. He had a beak for a nose and small, thin lips.

"Why does that guy look familiar?" Evelyn whispered. "Galloway...Galloway..." She stared at him for a moment more as he took his seat on the podium. "Galloway...I've met him! He's hospital administrator at Doc Webster's hospital. Why would he be here?"

Hess recited a few more names until the seats behind him were full.

"Thank you so much for joining me, and for indulging us in giving you a bit of very well-deserved recognition. We of this city owe you so very much, and I know that I personally do not thank you for that nearly as often as I should." He took a breath and smiled again. "As the tabloids have been speculating and you have probably guessed, I do have an announcement to make, and it is fortunate that Doctor Nicholas Galloway is already on the podium with me. Ladies and gentlemen, my friends, Hess Holdings and the Kimble Health Care Group are announcing a partnership. In a matter of weeks, we break ground on a brand new, state-of-the-art healthcare facility, which will be one of the largest and most advanced in country. In the coming months, we'll also be opening a series of free community clinics, bringing new life and accessible healthcare to the neighborhoods in our city that need it the most. These spaces represent a joint pro bono venture: by Hess Holdings providing the real estate and construction free of charge, we can lower operating costs and other overhead, and thereby provide free healthcare to those that might not have access to it otherwise. This is the first step down a path of progress and revitalization, and there is no one Hess Holdings would rather have with us on this path than the dedicated, hard-working men and women of the Kimble Group."

The glamorous crowd broke into wild applause and Hess motioned for Galloway to join him at the podium. They shook hands and smiled and then allowed themselves to be congratulated by the others on the podium.

"What the hell does that mean?" Ryan asked as the vigorous hand-shaking continued.

"No idea." Evelyn replied. "But I feel like we should probably get out while we can. Did you guys get all that?" She asked, tapping her ear piece.

Ryan stood up, ready to make his exit and get them back to the warehouse. As he did, he felt a pair of eyes on him from across the room.

Standing just inside the doorway to the ballroom was a man Ryan had never seen before. He wore a cheap, tattered suit with a sloppily tied tie that hung loose around his neck. He had long, stringy, brown hair with streaks of gray that hung limp around his face like a hood. It was the eyes however, that gave him away.

They were a sickly yellow color, made brighter by the dark circles beneath his eyelids. The man stared straight at him, unblinking, and in that moment there wasn't a doubt in Ryan's mind: Grayle.

Ryan watched as the werewolf drew his thin, colorless lips back from his yellow teeth in a sinister smile. His eyes narrowed and he began to breathe heavily as he initiated the transformation.

"Your gun." Ryan whispered to Evelyn.

"What?!" She said, looking up.

"Give me your gun." He replied through gritted teeth.

She looked cautiously around and then surreptitiously drew the tiny gun from its holster and pressed it into Ryan's palm. His eyes never left Grayle's as he raised the gun above his head and fired two deafening shots into the air.

The socialites scattered. They screamed and scrambled over each other in a desperate stampede for the door. A number of people however, a large number, stood their ground and locked their eyes on the unmoving teenagers. These were Hess' people, and there were a lot of them.

"Back up?" Ryan asked through the corner of his mouth.

"Already on their way."

"Take this." He said, tossing the gun back to Evelyn. "You're going to need it."

The room cleared of bystanders and Grayle let out a throaty, human roar before ripping his collared shirt away and giving in to the beast. It was a jerky, violent transformation as dark brown fur sprouted all over the man's body. Ryan shrugged off his dinner jacket and new shoes and lamented the imminent destruction of such a fine pair of pants.

The transformed Grayle charged across the ballroom, flinging tables and chairs out of his way as he went. The other Hess cronies knew enough to stay out of his way, and they scattered to avoid becoming collateral damage.

Ryan cleared his mind, concentrated on his singular purpose, and felt the gray fur ripple across his body. Grayle leapt from ten feet away and collided with Ryan just as the transformation completed. The two monsters skidded across the polished floor in a swirling mix of gray and brown.

Evelyn dove out of the way just as Ryan and Grayle blew past and collided with one of the huge picture windows with a sickening thud. It was Grayle who had made contact with the window, and he shook his shaggy brown head to clear it as the two werewolves tried to recover from the daze.

In a flash, Grayle was back on Ryan, and he used his superior strength and experience to bite and claw with everything he had. Their movements were lightning fast, a blur to the human eye, and it seemed like for every modest hit Ryan managed to land, Grayle struck back with a slash that was twice as painful and effective. The fight had just begun and Ryan was already losing.

Every time he went in for an attack, Grayle would nip at his exposed neck. Ryan snarled and tried to block and twist away, but maneuvering in Grayle's grasp was like trying to worm his way out of a vice. He felt slash after slash and bite after bite penetrate his thick hide, and he felt himself beginning to tire quickly and weaken even faster. Grayle reared his head back and Ryan landed a satisfying slash across his opponent's muzzle, but Grayle simply snarled in anger and retaliated by clamping his jaws into Ryan's shoulder.

Ryan felt each tooth break the skin and he howled in pain and frustration. Instinct took over and he worked his massive feet beneath Grayle's sternum and kicked with savage force.

Grayle slid away across the cold floor and he came to a stop in the clearing of the abandoned dance floor, near the windows. Faster than Ryan would have believed, he was back on his feet and ready to charge again. Ryan wasn't ready. He was too weak and bleeding too much. He doubted he could weather another attack.

Then something happened that no one on either side was expecting: a streak of black, an obsidian shadow against an inky sky, rocketed towards the building. No one could quite tell what the shadow was, but it grew nearer and nearer with no sign of slowing down.

Then, when it was perhaps ten feet from the glass side of the skyscraper, Ryan realized what was happening. Black feathers were sucked into ebony skin as the shadow grew in size and contorted in shape. In an instant, it was Daniel hurtling feet-first toward the building. Ryan watched as if the entire sequence were happening before him in slow motion: Daniel's hands flew to a large black shotgun, which he leveled at the ballroom window milliseconds before impact. The gun fired and the window exploded inward in a thousand tiny shards as Daniel's considerable momentum carried him through the broken window and he crashed feet-first into the stunned Grayle. The werewolf was smashed brutally to the floor as Daniel rolled to recover from the landing. He popped up and in one fluid motion had the twelve-gauge trained steadily on Hess. Grayle remained motionless on the ground and the form of the wolf faded from him.

Hess hadn't flinched through any of it; instead he merely smiled his same, sincere smile. "Daniel." He began, and spread his arms warmly. "It is truly wonderful to see you again. And if memory serves, this little situation is a great deal similar to the last time you and I saw each other face-to-face. Of course the weapon you're pointing at my head has changed a bit...back then it was a..." Hess paused and stared afar off, trying to vocalize something on the edge of his brain. "Ah! It was that rapier that Swetnam himself had made for you. I remember now, beautiful blade. Whatever happened to it?"

"The top six inches broke off in Vincent's stomach." Daniel replied calmly.

"Ah yes, Vincent. I knew that damned belly of his would get him into trouble some day. I told him only so many orphans could go missing before someone would put twelve and twelve together, but alas." Hess took a casual sip of wine before he continued. "Don't get me wrong old friend, the rapier was beautiful but this," he gestured to the gun, "this is quite nice as well. Saiga 12, unless I'm mistaken? I suppose it was about time the Russians got something right, eh?" He winked. "Now, as lovely as that weapon is, and as fantastic as it is to see you again, physical combat holds absolutely no allure for me anymore, so I will be on my way."

He stepped down from the podium and he motioned to a large man standing near him. Hess strode towards the door and the large man grabbed the unconscious Grayle and dragged him towards the exit.

Daniel kept the gun barrel trained on the exiting vampire's head.

"Do it." Evelyn whispered.

"I cannot. Not if you wish to survive this encounter. I have twelve rounds in this magazine and I will need each of them." He replied as the men and women who had remained behind began to close ranks around the three of them. "Hess poses no immediate threat. These gentlemen, on the other hand..."

Ryan bristled his fur and showed his teeth, and it seemed to work. A few of their soon-to-be attackers seemed to appreciate just what a werewolf could do to them, and their step faltered. Many more however, gave no quarter.

It was then that Ryan's improved hearing picked up a group of sounds making their way down the deserted hallway. Footfalls and a great deal of scraping and scuffling.

He released his grip on the wolf and felt his body shrink back into human form. Ryan was more than aware of the fact that he was now standing in the middle of a very posh, very well-lit hotel ballroom wearing nothing but tattered tuxedo pants, but he had more important things on his mind.

"He's sent vampires after us. A lot of vampires."

Ryan had said it to his friends, but Hess' minions had heard him as well, and they looked nervously at one another. They wanted to run and break ranks, but they knew disobeying a direct order from Hess was just as much of a death sentence as being trapped in a room full of vampires. A few seconds later, the arduous choice was taken out of their hands.

The vampires streamed into the ballroom like ants out of a hill. They were everywhere, clawing and scrambling over one another in a sickly-pale swarm. Hess' other goons panicked and bolted for the door all at the same time. The vampires overtook them immediately as they flocked around the lackeys and then buried them under a feeding frenzy of skeletal bodies. It was a gruesome sight, but it gave Ryan and the others the precious few seconds they needed.

"I hope Miles made it down to the van. I haven't heard anything from him." Evelyn said as she readied the small pistol in one hand and drew the larger, stranger pistol in her other.

"Tell Ruby of what is happening. We could use her." Daniel said.

"I tried contacting her when things first started to heat up. No one from the van is answering." She replied.

Daniel's face darkened. "We will deal with that when it comes time. Ryan, you will be the largest thing in their field of vision. They will focus on you. Lead them on a chase, fight when you can, and we will do our best to pick them off."

"That's fine." Ryan said tersely. "But shouldn't we be more worried about finding an exit?"

"Unless you want to go out the window, we've got to go through those doors." Evelyn replied. "That means we've got to thin the herd at least a little."

And then the herd attacked. Ryan couldn't see what had happened to the other people that had been in the room, but knew he probably didn't want to. The vampires had lost interest in the others and turned back to the three of them so quickly that Ryan barely had time to transform before they were on him.

They sprang up around him and suddenly he felt bony hands clawing at him from all directions. He snarled and swiped at the vampires but for every one he sent hurtling across the room, two more popped up in its place.

Daniel and Evelyn were behind him, firing their weapons in rapid staccato. There were small, loud snaps from Evelyn's pocket-sized pistol, and ringing thunderclaps from Daniel's shotgun.

One vampire jumped straight for Ryan's head and together they crashed to the ground. In an instant, half a dozen more vampires were on top of him, and they bit and snapped their decaying jaws. He managed to fling one off his right arm and then clear a few more before being pinned back down. Ryan had the strength and the speed, but they had the numbers.

Dark, stale blood spattered over Ryan's face and a clean red hole appeared in the forehead of the vampire attacking his face. The re-dead creature slumped down and then slid off Ryan's torso and Evelyn leveled the smoking gun at yet another attacker.

With great difficulty Ryan managed to extricate himself and scramble back to his feet. He swatted away a vampire closing in on Daniel's back, and caught another one by the throat as he slammed it into the ground and splintered the polished wood with its cracking skull.

The three regrouped as well as they could against the onslaught and Ryan heard both guns at the same time make an audible click. Daniel pulled a pair of matching black nine millimeters from his hips and began covering Evelyn, who fumbled with her second gun.

"Ryan!" Daniel roared between shots. "Make them chase you!"

In the heat of battle, Ryan had completely forgotten the job he had been given. He drove his broad, muscled shoulder into a few of the nearest vampires and then leapt over the heads of the horde, landing ten feet away and against the far wall.

The flying wall of fur had been enough to catch the attention of most of the monsters, and Ryan continued to make them chase him stupidly around the ballroom. He leapt from tables to chairs to walls, and then down the slick wooden bar that ran nearly the length of the room.

Evelyn had finished fumbling with her gun. She took careful aim with the pistol and fired. What emerged however, was not a bullet, but something else. It was far larger and moved far slower, and only when it made impact did Ryan realize why the gun looked as strange as it did: Evelyn was firing paintballs.

The ball exploded on the forehead of a vampire a few yards away. The thing recovered from the shot, confused that it was not dead. Ryan too, had no idea what the paintball was supposed to do against a once-human skull. Evelyn, however, never missed a beat.

She fired round after round into the crowd, seemingly with no effect. Soon, almost a dozen vampires had the dark, sticky contents of the paintballs trickling down their foreheads or chests. Ryan could tell it wasn't actually paint that filled the capsules, but the dark sludge didn't seem to be any more effective than real paint would have been. The vampires she hit were startled by the impact, but by no means were they stopped.

Daniel covered her as best he could, but soon the mob became too much. Evelyn dropped the pistol, delivered a brutal front kick to a vampire approaching on her left, and then she became still. The girl of Ryan's dreams closed her eyes and extended a hand, the fingertips spread wide.

A few breathless seconds ticked by and then, without any warning, brilliant orange flames began to appear in the crowd. The affected vampires screamed and tried to brush the fire away but only succeeded in spreading it faster. One by one, each vampire that Evelyn had hit with a paintball found himself on fire, with the goo as the source. Little by little, the fire spread: the dry, dying skin of the vampires burned like dead leaves. Vampires that were hit with the substance flailed into other vampires and more and more began to drop like flies.

Even so, it wasn't nearly enough. A third of the vampires had fallen to the bullets or the burning or by Ryan's hand, but there were a large number left unharmed. To make matters worse, the fire and the young woman psychically spreading it had turned the vampires' attention away from Ryan and back to the others. Evelyn had resorted to fists and Daniel, in an effort to conserve what little ammo he had left, had been using his pistols as blunt clubs. They were being driven slowly into the center of the ballroom and the mob was closing in on all sides. Ryan wanted nothing more than to launch himself, jaws first, into the fray and fight side-by-side with his friends. Instead however, he began to formulate a ridiculous, half-cocked plan that he was almost certain he had seen in an episode of _Tom and Jerry_ years ago.

Ryan sprang onto the bar and began to hurl bottle after bottle of top-shelf liquor at the perimeter of the vampire mass. He made his way around the group until the floor surrounding them was wet with a large circle of two hundred dollar alcohol. This was as far ahead in the plan as he had thought, so he took the only next step he could think of.

Ryan launched himself into the group of vampires and kicked and clawed his way to the center where Daniel and Evelyn were surrounded. He grabbed Evelyn around the waist and hurled her over the heads of the vampires, praying she didn't crash into a table and break her spine. Daniel saw what Ryan had done and nodded. He jumped toward Ryan and used the werewolf's hairy shoulder as a springboard to launch himself straight up into the air. In a flash, the black pants and brown skin had melted into the raven, which took flight up and around the room. The hole in the center of the ballroom was rapidly filling with vampires on all sides, and Ryan leapt out after Evelyn just as the hands began to rake his fur.

Evelyn had landed unharmed, but she glared at Ryan in annoyance anyway. He didn't have time to apologize, so instead he pointed to the ring of splattered liquor and Evelyn immediately understood.

The vampires had watched Ryan's escape and were scrambling over each other to chase after him. Evelyn stood and once again extended her hand.

A wall of flame shot up and encircled the bloodsuckers, trapping them in the center of the room. They wailed and screamed and Evelyn's face shook with concentration as she kept the flames licking higher. Ryan caught the attention of the circling Daniel, and directed him to the final piece of the ridiculous mousetrap. Daniel seemed to understand. Ryan grabbed Evelyn's hand in his gigantic, hairy paw and they stumbled across the room as far from the vampires as they could.

Evelyn's concentration had been broken and the flames began to die down. The vampires saw the weakening barrier and began to push out against it. It was a matter of seconds before the flames would be low enough for them to step over.

The black bird flapped its wings furiously to gain altitude in the dead air of the ballroom. He flew up to the top of the massive chandelier and became human once again, perching precariously in his black boots on the uppermost part of the structure. He took careful aim at the large fixtures which held the chandelier to the ceiling and shot them away one by one. After a moment, the weight became too much for the remaining fixtures to bear, and the giant crystal behemoth snapped off its fasteners and began to plummet to the ground.

Daniel leapt off and transformed in midair while Ryan and Evelyn watched thousands of pounds of crystal and gold and wiring fall toward the struggling vampires beneath. Ryan couldn't tell if they knew what was coming, but he felt another faint twinge of pity.

Evelyn kicked over a nearby table to use as a barrier between them and the coming crash, and Ryan threw his gigantic form over her body for protection as they crouched behind it. The noise was deafening. The screams were short.

The shattering of each tiny piece of crystal happened so rapidly that it sounded more like the crash of one massive ocean wave. The vampires howled in pain or fear but soon their cries were drowned out entirely by the crash that seemed to have no end. Fragments of chandelier, and vampire, pelted against the upturned table like rain on a tin roof and Ryan held Evelyn's scorching body inside his own.

Finally, the sound ended. And there were no more sounds. Ryan felt Evelyn stirring and he gingerly raised his head over the table to survey the rubble.

In the center of the room was one giant pile of crystal, wood, and bodies. Some of the debris began to shift slightly and Ryan could tell that not all of the vampires had been killed. For the moment however, they seemed trapped.

Bits of crystal and debris had been shot like bullets into the walls and furniture for fifteen feet in every direction. Dust and drywall had taken the place of the orchids as the centerpiece of most of the tables, and the rest had collapsed or broken apart entirely. The once-beautiful walls were caked in dust and jagged holes, and any of the bottles behind the bar that had survived Ryan's tossing were now shattered beyond recognition.

A wave of exhaustion washed over Ryan and he shrank back into human form.

"Holy crap." Evelyn said simply.

Daniel landed next to them and resumed his human shape as well. "We need to leave."

"Why, do you think this'll go on our bill?" Ryan asked.

They made their way out into the deserted hallway and into a golden elevator. Ryan had never been quite so relieved to hear muzak.

His relief lasted exactly as long as the elevator ride: as soon as the doors opened on the basement parking level, a grisly scene met their eyes.

The white van was parked at a strange angle in front of the elevator. Both driver and passenger side doors were open, and leading away from the driver's side was a sickening trail of fresh red blood.

Evelyn gasped, and they all ran to the vehicle as quickly as their tired, bruised bodies could take them. They found Ruby unconscious but alive, sprawled across the front seat. The back was empty and neither Miles nor Dr. Webster was anywhere to be found.

Evelyn ran to the aid of Ruby and tried to shake her awake while Daniel inspected the blood trail. "Fresh. A matter of minutes. Can you track it?"

Ryan nodded. "I think so."

"I wouldn't be so sure, mate."

They whirled around and found Miles jogging up to them. "The trail ends around that corner, then they must've thrown him in a car."

"Were you here?" Daniel demanded.

Miles shook his head. "I only got here a few minutes ago. Been tryin' to wake Ruby, then I saw the trail. The doc is gone. Somebody's got 'im."

"The boy ain't wrong." Ruby agreed as she pushed herself into a sitting position. "Coupla suits jumped us so fast we didn't even see faces. Conked Robert over the head, then me."

"Do you know why they took him and left you?" Daniel asked.

She shook her head. "We all know I'm the prettier one. Can't imagine what they'd want the doc for."

Evelyn had heard enough. "We're wasting time, we need to find him. Now." She began to march toward her father's silver convertible which the valet had parked a few spaces away.

"Evelyn, wait." Daniel called.

"No. You can stay here and talk and sit on your thumbs if you want to, but I'm going after him. The longer we wait the less chance we have of tracking him down."

Miles piped up. "The sooner we run off after him without a plan, sooner we get ourselves killed."

"He's right." Daniel said. "I know what the doctor means to you, but we have no information whatsoever. We do not know where he is, we do not know why they took him, we do not know if they are even keeping him alive or if they have killed him already."

Evelyn began to shake with rage and Ryan thought he could feel the heat all the way from where he stood.

"We need to go back to the warehouse." Daniel said. "At least to reload. We need more weapons, more ammunition, and you will need more napalm."

She looked down at the paintball pistol in her hand. The heat subsided and Evelyn began to breathe normally again. "I'm going to give you an hour." She said. "Then I'm going after him. I don't care if any of you come with me, but nobody better try and stop me."

Daniel nodded in acceptance.

"We won't need an hour." Ryan interjected. "I think I've got this thing figured out."

### Chapter 20

"The hospital." Ryan said.

"The new one?" Miles asked. "The one they're building?"

Ryan shook his head. "The old one. The very first thing you guys ever told me about Anthony Hess was that he wasn't a take-over-the-world kind of bad guy, he was the profit margin kind. Where's the profit in this deal with the Kimble Group? The _new_ hospital, that makes sense: that's big money. But putting community clinics in prime business space? Nobody is going to just give away real estate like that."

"What about public image?" Evelyn asked. "Sure makes him look good."

"But he doesn't need it. Hess is the city's golden boy. He's already got everybody eating out of his hand, he doesn't need to add salt. Especially not by sacrificing millions of dollars."

"What are you saying?" Daniel asked.

"I'm saying that the free clinics have to be part of his expansion plans for Vain. Now I don't know if he's going to use the clinics to get more blood from people or to get more people addicted to his stuff, but there's not a doubt in my mind: he's expanding his operation. Galloway the hospital administrator, or I guess, just the hospital, that's the key to all of this: we knew he was making the stuff locally and we knew he was getting large quantities of human blood from somewhere without anyone noticing. I don't know what's going on at that hospital, but we've finally got a link in the chain and I think it's the best lead we've got."

Ruby nodded. "Makes sense. Even if they don't have Robert at the hospital, it's as good a place as any to start looking."

"How did you put all of this together?" Evelyn asked.

Ryan took a deep breath. "I've watched a lot of _Scooby Doo_. I mean, a _lot_."

"Hell, works fer me." Miles said

***

Snow had begun to fall as the van pulled out of the garage and soon the streets and sidewalks and buildings began to disappear under a gentle white blanket. Ryan sat with Miles and Ruby in the back of the bouncing van.

"Not exactly a magic wand." Ryan said, nodding to the antique-looking rifle slung across Ruby's lap.

She smiled. "Oh, you'd be surprised. After all, magic can give you an edge, but there ain't nothing in this world so handy in a scrap as a good rifle. This here has been in my family since my ancestors first staked their claim in Louisiana. Never misfired, never jammed, and, legend has it," she said with a wink, "never, ever missed."

She gave the gun a gentle pat and then readjusted her gear. She still wore the brown duster and all her jewelry and necklaces, but tonight she had also donned a strange kind of bandolier, leather and slung across her chest. Instead of ammunition however, small brown bags of different shapes and sizes hung from the straps and swayed in unison whenever she moved.

"I'm not one to complain here," Miles said, changing the subject, "but do we have any kinda plan?"

"We find the doc." Ruby replied simply.

"Well yeah, but what if he isn't here?"

"Then we ask these nice people where he is." She said as she pulled down the lever on the rifle.

"You coulda just said we got no plan. I'da been fine with that. Prefer it, actually."

Ryan sat back and wondered. He wondered if he was leading four good people into a trap. He wondered if he was leading them to a complete and utter dead end. He wondered if he was leading them to their deaths.

He was worried about the decisions he had made, and the ones he was going to be asked to make, but Ryan found himself more worried about Evelyn. Since the discovery of the bloody van, she had been a very different person than the one Ryan had gotten to know. She was even more reckless and hot-headed, almost bloodthirsty. Webster meant a lot to Evelyn, Ryan knew that, he just hoped she didn't go off and do something stupid tonight that got her or somebody else hurt.

They felt the van stop and after a moment, the back doors swung open to reveal a snow-covered parking lot. It was the hospital Ryan had been discharged from only months before, but those months had felt like a lifetime, and the Ryan that had left this place was not the same Ryan who was now returning to it.

The hospital was a group of four or five large buildings clustered together on a relatively small area of land. It was nearly two in the morning and the parking lot was empty, but some of the lights were still on. Hospitals, after all, never really closed. They were almost a hundred yards away from any of the structures, but even from here they could see that one of the buildings in particular was darker than the others.

"Stay here." Daniel ordered. "I will report back."

The raven took off from the crystalline white ground and disappeared into the murky blue of the night.

Ryan looked around nervously then pulled Evelyn a few feet away, just out of earshot of Miles and Ruby, who were dutifully checking their many weapons. She had changed out of the incredible red dress and back into her incredible black tank top and combat pants.

"Are you alright?" He whispered.

"Fine." She said flatly, examining the silver Jericho pistol.

"I don't believe you."

"I don't give a damn." She said as she looked up into his eyes. "I don't have to explain myself to you, not about this."

"You don't have to. I get it."

"You don't get it. This is just a job to you, and that's fine. But it's more to me. I owe that man everything and I didn't deserve any of it. If he's in there, I'm either coming out with him or not at all, because if I lose him, that's it for me. You have friends, you have a family. I have one person in this bad joke of a world, and he is out there somewhere bleeding. So no, I guess I'm not fine. But standing here whining about my feelings isn't going to get the job done."

"You can't do the job right if you're on the warpath like this."

She let the slide on the gun click back into place. "Watch me."

Daniel landed in the snow and retook human shape.

"It appears as though Ryan was correct. Something here is amiss. The far building, the one without any lights, it is chained up and looks as though it has been completely closed down for months. There is no logic to a fully-functional, well-funded hospital like this one to close any of its doors. If we are to find anything, it will be there."

Snow fell silently in large, soft flakes that twirled and danced as they fell. In fact, everything around them was silent: there was no breeze to rustle the trees, no distant cars, no sirens, and no talking. The only sound was the crunching of their feet on the inch of snow that had already accumulated over the pavement.

It wasn't a long walk to the darkened building, but it felt that way. The anticipation of a coming battle combined with the fear of what unknown, terrible things might await them resulted in heavy hearts and heavier feet.

The side entrance that Daniel led them to was indeed wrapped in a heavy chain. They were still a few feet away from the door when out of the shadows, Isaac appeared.

Evelyn was first to react and in a millisecond her gun was an inch from the man's forehead.

"Easy, love." He said, his palms up in a gesture of peace. "I'm not here to fight."

"I am." She said.

"That I can see. But I'm here to ask you to reconsider. Hess knows you're here, he's ready for you. He's formed up a pretty hefty welcoming party, and none of them is quite so charming as me, if you follow my meaning."

"So this was a trap?" She asked.

"Nah, he's got no interest in killing you. This was a...cost of doing business. He figured after what happened with Webster, you'd be after him."

"Where's the doctor?" Evelyn demanded, her tone icy as she pressed the gun barrel to his forehead.

"I honestly don't know. He could be in there, I wouldn't know. All I know is that I'm here to deliver a message: leave this place alone and everybody goes home happy. Hess doesn't want to kill you, covering up that sort of thing is expensive. But he can't let you disrupt the operation either."

Evelyn lowered the gun. "Give us Webster and we walk."

Isaac shrugged. "I would if I had him, but like I said: I just do as I'm told. I'm just here to deliver the message."

Bang.

The gun had jumped up in the blink of an eye and Evelyn had put a slug through Isaac's shoulder from point-blank range. Despite this, the man barely flinched and there didn't seem to be any blood coming out of the hole in his leather jacket.

"I see." He said calmly. "Well, I suppose that's a 'message received' then. Have a lovely evening."

And without another word Isaac stepped back into the shadow and disappeared.

Daniel delivered a powerful kick to the rusted padlock and it crumbled away. They slid the chain off the door and entered the vacant building.

The air was stale and smelled of dust and old chemical cleaner. It was utterly and completely still inside the building, except for the soft footfalls of five people on dusty hospital linoleum.

The power, it seemed, had either been cut or turned off and they were forced to mount their search in relative darkness. Large windows ran the length of the outer hallways and the snow outside reflected enough eerie blue light by which to see.

"Miles, can you hear any minds?" Daniel asked.

"No." Miles replied. "I'm not picking up anything. So either this place is empty, or it's full of things that aren't human."

"Great." Ryan muttered.

They made their way slowly to the end of the hall without seeing or hearing anything. Ryan had been so keyed up, ready to transform at a moment's notice, that he'd forgotten all about the wolf's improved senses. He transformed immediately and detected a faint industrial pounding that came from further inside the building and below them. He returned to human shape and told the rest of the group.

"Below us..." Ruby mused. "We're on the ground floor."

"Must be a basement." Evelyn said.

"Also great." Miles said sarcastically.

They found a staircase and followed it down to the basement. Daniel leveled his shotgun as they approached the door, then he eased the door open.

Windows set high on the walls, level with the ground floor, shed hazy blue light on the scene, which was far different than the one above.

A dozen vampires had been waiting at the door and were on the group in seconds. Ryan was struck from behind and knocked to the ground before he could transform. A vampire was on him and snapping away. He punched and kicked at the thing but it held on. With all his human might Ryan flung it off him and scrambled to his feet. He felt the wolf wash over him and by the time the vampire had recovered and come back for a second round, it was facing a very different opponent. The vampire, undaunted, charged. With a massive swipe of his paw Ryan cracked the creature's head against the cold brick of the wall.

Daniel, Ruby, and Miles had dispatched the other vampires quickly with a few swift gunshots. Evelyn's guns however, were still holstered.

Instead, she had two hands around the vampire's neck and was struggling with it on the floor a few feet from them. They rolled and grunted until Ryan heard Evelyn release a sharp, feral snarl and slam the creature to the ground and snap its brittle neck.

Ryan heard scuffling footsteps coming at them from both ends of the hall, then the others heard it too.

Daniel nodded. "Miles and Ruby will come with me down the left corridor. Can you two handle the right on your own?" He asked Ryan and Evelyn.

They nodded.

"Good." He said. "Do not put yourselves in situations you cannot escape. We have no back up for you this time. Ryan," he pulled from a holster on his hip a silver gun with wooden grips, "I loaded this with silver bullets. If Grayle finds us here, keep him occupied until I can get to you. Then we can finish him."

Ryan nodded his great gray head and Daniel put the gun back in its holster.

The other three set off down the left and Ryan followed Evelyn down the right.

The vampires were just around the corner and seemed surprised to meet the teenagers here. Ryan, still transformed, leapt into the fray head-first with the driving force of a freight train. Vampires scattered like bowling pins and he grabbed a neck in each hand and drove them both hard into the ground. He clawed and bit into dying flesh and the gunshots behind him told Ryan that Evelyn was holding her own.

They made quick work of the remaining vampires and continued on their journey despite the gunshots and battle cries of their allies down the corridor behind them. Finding the doctor was the priority, and Ryan knew he had to trust that the others could handle themselves.

Evelyn of course, had no problem keeping focus on the mission. She jogged down the corridor without a second thought and Ryan loped to keep up.

They rounded the corner and the hallway grew darker as they moved farther away from the small windows. After a moment, the two came to a four-way intersection with another hallway. They stopped.

"Any ideas?" Evelyn asked.

Ryan shook his shaggy head.

Without any warning or preamble, a hail of gunfire clattered around them out of the blackness in the right-hand hallway. Ryan leapt across the gap and the two took cover against the corners on either side. The muzzle flashes Ryan had seen out of the corner of his eye suggested four or five men, perhaps thirty yards down the hallway. Ryan shifted back to human.

"Guns?!" He exclaimed. "An entire supernatural world of nasty things and he sends guys with guns after us?"

"Well it seems to be working." Evelyn replied.

"Give me a weapon." Ryan shouted over another volley.

"You're supposed to _be_ a weapon." She exclaimed.

"Against bullets?"

"They're not gonna kill you. Just don't get shot in the head."

"Not exactly my idea of a brilliant battle strategy."

Evelyn rolled her eyes and slid Ryan the submachine gun she had strapped to her back. He picked it up with nervous fingers.

Evelyn fired a few blind rounds down the hallway and they heard at least one of the men go down. Ryan peeked around the corner and saw nothing but darkness. Out of the darkness appeared four distinct muzzle flashes and he barely had time to pull his head back before a dozen rounds buried themselves in the floor and wall next to him. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and the light from the nearby window meant the men could see them perfectly, while they could see nothing.

Ryan snaked the submachine gun around the corner and rattled off a few ineffective rounds. The gun bucked in his hand and he didn't have to look to know that none of his shots had made contact.

A silence fell as neither side fired for a moment. Ryan knew they were pinned down, and although these four men were not the biggest threat they had faced that night, time was still ticking away. He knew the longer they were stuck here, the less of a chance they had of finding Dr. Webster.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan saw a streak of brown and gray round the corner they had just come from. In one fluid motion, Ruby yanked one of the bags off her bandolier, tossed it into the air of the darkened hallway, drew the lever-action rifle from her back, and fired a single shot straight through the bag.

The hallway exploded in a flash of brilliant purple light and everyone but Ruby had to turn their heads and cover their eyes. She stood unmoving at their end of the hall, straight in the enemy's line of fire. The woman took careful aim and planted one, two, three, four shots.

The purple light died away, but not before Ryan caught a glimpse down the hallway of four slumped bodies.

"Thanks." He exclaimed.

Ruby smiled her crinkled, worn smile. "Told you, never miss-"

Blood exploded out of a patch on her thigh and Ruby crumpled to the ground with a cry of pain and surprise. Ryan reached out from cover and pulled her behind the corner. More bullets went slamming into the far wall, but there had been no gunshot.

"What the hell is going on?" Ryan asked as he tried to apply pressure to Ruby's bullet wound.

Evelyn shook her head. "I don't know. You deal with that, I'll deal with this." She peeked the pistol around the corner and fired a few more blind shots.

"Third one down." Ruby said weakly, nodding to her bandolier.

Ryan yanked the bag off the belt and opened it. He shook the pale green powder out onto Ruby's leg and the wound began to sizzle. It gave off a horrible, putrid stench, but the blood began to clot immediately.

More un-fired rounds pounded into the walls, and then they heard the unmistakable sounds of weapons being disassembled: all five weapons at once.

Realization dawned on Evelyn's face. "Telekinetic." She whispered to Ryan. That means these are useless." She holstered her gun. "Your time to shine."

"What are you talking about? Won't he just smack me against a wall? Or bring the wall down on me?"

Evelyn shook her head. "Doesn't work like that. Size and weight are huge factors. They can hurl bullets and tennis balls, but not cars. He shouldn't be able to control you."

"Shouldn't?"

"Only one way to find out."

"What if he's got bullets left?"

"Then you deal with it." She replied harshly. "We're out of options."

"Fine."

Ryan helped Ruby deeper into the side hallway, away from the action.

"You must be new here." Evelyn called down the darkened hall.

There was no response for a moment, and then a woman's voice, a girl's voice, rang out from the black. It was snide, almost mocking. "What gave you that idea?"

"Because this is only the first time you've tried to kill me." Evelyn replied.

Ryan concentrated and felt his body transform. The darkness around him became clearer and better defined. He returned to the corner and crouched his huge body as well as he could in the cramped corridor.

"First and last." The voice replied.

Ryan leapt out from behind the wall and tore down the hallway at top speed. He could see much better now, but the girl at the far end of the hall was still little more than an outline. She had seen him coming and, despite his incredible speed, the mind was still faster.

A rifle stock hit him square in the chest with the force of a cannonball. The impact sent him spinning off balance and he crashed into the side wall. An empty magazine struck him in the face and Ryan felt as if he had just been punched by a truck. He was dazed, but not so out of it that he didn't notice, or feel, the hail of metal gun parts that rained down on him from all sides.

The girl was still twenty feet away and Ryan was being pelted nonstop with the makeshift artillery. He let out a deafening roar of frustration that reverberated off the linoleum floors and tiled walls.

The pelting stopped as the girl lost concentration for a moment, frightened, and it was the only opening Ryan needed.

He sprang to his feet and raced down the hall. Powerful leg muscles coiled then released as he launched himself at their attacker. He sailed through the air, closing in with incredible speed, and then he stopped.

Ryan was inches from the girl, but he hung still in midair like a forgotten marionette. The girl had both hands up, shaking, and her face was contorted in immense concentration as she held Ryan aloft.

She couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve, with long, sleek black hair that fell almost to her waist. She wore a white dress with a red sash to match her red hair band. Ryan didn't know what she was doing in a place like this, dressed like that, levitating a werewolf like him, but he was sick of it.

Ryan struggled and swiped in the air but she held him fast, as if an invisible wall separated them. Her hands began to shake and Ryan watched as perspiration started to dot her small forehead. He felt the wall coming down.

He struggled and kicked and, little by little, inch by inch, made his way toward the girl as if he was walking against gale-force winds. He made it a foot closer, then another. They were inches apart now and Ryan reached up a paw to grab at her, but there was no need. He felt the wall come down and girl collapsed from the effort, out cold. He reverted to human form and called out to Evelyn.

She arrived a few moments later beneath the arm of the injured Ruby. Ryan put a hand to the girl's neck: her heartbeat was normal, but she was unconscious.

"What took you so long?" Evelyn asked.

"She held me. I mean in midair. I looked like Wile E. Coyote before he realizes he just ran off a cliff."

"I've never heard of a telekinetic being able to do that. She's bad news." Evelyn said.

"So what do we do with her?" Ryan asked.

Ruby fished another bag from somewhere within her coat. "Sprinkle a tiny bit of this under her nose. She'll stay conked out 'til all this is over. A _tiny_ bit, mind you. We don't wanna kill her."

"Speak for yourself." Evelyn growled.

Ryan applied the powder and they left the deadly preteen laying in the hallway.

The going was slow now, with Ruby's injured leg, but they didn't dare leave her. Evelyn was still dead-set and steel-jawed on the mission, but she knew the only way to complete the mission was to live, and the only way to live was to stick together.

Wandering the halls was an arduous process: Ruby's injury slowed them down, but they also had to check each room for the doctor.

"Why did you come back for us?" Ryan asked Ruby after they had stopped so she could rest.

"Daniel and Miles, we hit a dead end back there. Nowhere else to go, so we were on our way back when another group of vamps jumped us. We cleaned 'em up okay, but Miles got hurt in the process. That boy has the worst luck on these little excursions, I swear it. Anyway, Daniel was taking him back to the van. He's gonna meet up with us...if he ever finds us."

"What do you mean, 'dead end'?" Evelyn asked.

"There was nothing down there, child. Lotta empty rooms, lotta dark hallways. If there's anything in this building, it's down this way."

Evelyn gave Ryan a pleading look. "The thumping you heard when we were upstairs, do you have a direction?"

Ryan had been so preoccupied with the guns and the girl, he had forgotten to listen. He transformed.

The pounding was louder now, but still rhythmic. It sounded as if it were being made by machines, or at least steel on steel. He couldn't make out an exact point of origin however, only a vague direction. He reverted to his human form and reported.

"Well a direction is better than what we had before." Ruby mused.

"Are you ready to go?" Ryan asked.

She pushed herself up off the ground in answer and they set out again down the labyrinthine hallways, this time toward the noise, which took them deeper and deeper into the basement.

They made their way in and out of corners, through hallways and long-forgotten offices and patient rooms. Nothing. Plastic sheeting covered most of the furniture and flapped ghostlike whenever they brushed past or opened a door. Except for the pounding, which was audible even to human ears now, everything was still.

A bruised and bloodied Daniel caught up to them a few minutes later, and the four hobbled together through the hospital.

Their winding, aimless path took them around a corner and back into moonlight. High-set windows lined the left-hand wall of this long, straight hallway which featured only two doors: a heavy steel one halfway down the right side, and a second, nondescript door facing them from the very end of the corridor.

Ryan looked out the row of windows and saw a small, enclosed courtyard. It was surrounded by the high walls of the building on all four sides, but it looked to be at least thirty or so feet across. The ground, as well as the single, skeletal tree standing in one corner, were covered in deepening snow.

As they started down this final corridor, the door in the side of the wall swung slowly open.

Out the door walked a man, tall and thin, wearing a blue pinstripe suit and the only ascot Ryan had ever seen a grown man wear, outside _Gilligan's Island_. It was silk and red and the perfect complement to the man's well-groomed, pointed goatee. The hair on his face and on his head was jet black, with a few streaks of spreading silver. He looked to Ryan to be the sort of man who should be wearing a monocle, or perhaps tying damsels to train tracks.

"Hello Ruby, my dear." The man said with a low, affected, haughty drawl.

"Hello Jeffrey." Ruby replied, unimpressed. "Now don't go takin' this the wrong way, but if memory serves, I killed you."

The man chuckled. "Yes, and what an inconvenience it was. I do hope we can put that behind us though, I'd prefer to proceed with all possible civility."

"You sure you ain't lookin' to return the favor?"

"Oh, if the mood strikes." He mused with a smile. "But to be perfectly candid, fighting you to the death was the most fun I've had in years."

"Always happy to help."

"Indeed. Unfortunately Mr. Hess has offered me a tidy sum to paint these halls with the blood of you and your friends, and as lamentable a loss as it will be, I'm afraid my coffers aren't quite as full as they used to be. Of course I'd prefer if you kept that last part our little secret. We don't want the black magic community to lose their esteem in the incomparable Jeffrey Hatfield. What a tragedy that would be."

Evelyn scoffed in disgust and raised her pistol. Hatfield merely smiled.

"This one's not much for the small talk. Pity. That rascal Isaac of course showed me what you did to his jacket...tsk tsk. I'm sorry, but I won't allow any piece of my wardrobe to suffer the same fate."

He plucked a small vial from inside his jacket pocket and spread its clear liquid contents in a circle around himself. He then produced a piece of charcoal and began to inscribe strange symbols on the ground, both inside and outside the circle.

"Save your ammo, honey." Ruby said and pushed Evelyn gently aside. Ruby pulled three bags from her bandolier and sat right down in the middle of the floor to carefully pour measured contents from one into the other and back and forth.

Hatfield finished his spell and the circle and symbols grew red with a strange inner glow. The light intensified and became so bright that Ryan had to look away.

When it had dimmed, then gone out entirely, Hatfield stood in the center of the circle and symbols, but he was no longer alone. On either side of him was a gigantic, jet black, bristling dog.

They were proportioned strangely, unlike any dog Ryan had ever before seen: their forelegs and shoulders were thick and muscular, but their bodies sloped down into less-muscled hindquarters and shorter back legs. They bore a great mane of black fur around their necks, and short, squashed snouts were set beneath glowing red eyes that gleamed strangely lifeless.

Hatfield smiled, and then without their master saying a word, the dogs attacked, running down the hallway toward them at full speed.

They grew closer and closer and Ruby still fiddled with the bags and powders. No one was shooting and Ryan wasn't sure why.

Ruby finished her work, grasped a handful of the hybrid powder, and tossed it out before them in an arc. The powder spread in the air like dust, but as it settled to the ground, it grouped back together in a solid line, ten feet from them. The dogs, more aware than Ryan of what was going on, skittered to a halt before the line, which now glowed a faint purple. They snarled and bristled at their foes, but made no move to cross the line.

Hatfield sighed, then smiled. "Never disappointing. Brava." He stepped back to the large steel door and drew upon it a single large, intricate symbol. After a few seconds, he finished, placed his hand momentarily on the door, then pulled back.

A strange series of crashes and clangs arose from inside the room beyond the steel door. It wasn't like the rhythmic pounding, it was an intermittent and unexpected, like a group of drunks stumbling around a room full of fine china and stainless steel cutlery.

Hatfield gave a final smile and disappeared, carried away into a thousand tiny pieces as if he were made of nothing but fine sand. Then they were alone with the dogs and the crashing.

The crashes however, quickly changed. They died away and were replaced by a low, hollow banging just on the other side of the door, as if a group of people were knocking to be let in. Ryan craned his neck to get a better look at the door and what he saw made the blood chill in his veins.

Above the door in worn black stencil was a room number, and a name: _B22 – Morgue_. The banging like fists on steel continued, and Ryan now knew that was exactly what it was.

"What do we do?" He asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

"The line won't hold forever." Ruby replied tensely, looking at the line of protective powder that had already begun to lose its glow. "And it sure won't stop whatever is in that room."

The door sprang open under the weight of what was behind it, and they spilled out into the murky hallway.

They were men and women and children, but only by very rough definition. Ryan had thought that the vampires looked like walking corpses, but they were nothing compared to this.

The bodies were all in varying stages of decay, but not the lush, full, slightly blue decay of zombie movies. Their skin ranged from pale and pasty white to dark and cracked brown, to none at all. A few were nothing more than skeletons with bits of long-dried flesh still hanging like rags from their exposed bones and sparse strands of hair still clinging to their heads. Some had entire chunks missing from their torsos, with dried black intestines hanging out and swaying as they walked. Most were missing limbs. Some, missing heads. All, even the children, were missing their eyes.

They walked as well as they could with incomplete bodies, and they shuffled ever closer to Ryan and the others. There was no moaning, likely because there were no vocal cords, and there were no outstretched arms...or even outstretched stumps of arms. Instead the bodies walked slowly, almost calmly forward. Ryan didn't know what they were going to do when they reached the group, but he knew he wasn't looking forward to it.

To make matters worse, bodies continued to pour out of the morgue. Dozens of them. He didn't know how big the adjoining room was, but he knew there was no way every single one of these things had been on a slab. It occurred to him then, in the part of his mind that wasn't filling with dread, that the morgue of a vacant building shouldn't have bodies in it to begin with.

Evelyn fired two shots and neat round holes appeared in the foreheads of two of the corpses. They didn't flinch, they didn't even notice. They just kept coming closer.

The black hounds didn't seem to notice the bodies as they shuffled past. Ruby was right: they stepped over the dim purple line as if it didn't exist. They drew closer.

Ruby brought the rifle to her shoulder and fired shot after shot after shot. Each one hit its mark squarely in the head or heart. None of them did the job. Daniel let loose with the shotgun, and from this range, the front few corpses were blown into dusty pieces. Soon however, he was out of ammunition, and they were out of ideas.

Ryan became the wolf and brought his shoulder forward to barrel into them. He managed to plow through a dozen, but they were unhurt and unfazed, and now he was surrounded.

They didn't attack him. They didn't punch or kick or bite, they simply grabbed at him. They grabbed and they held on. In close quarters like these, he could only shake off a few of them and even then the arms simply detached from the sockets and held on still. He felt a thousand cold, dead, rotting fingers grasp at his fur, at his arms and legs, at his face, at his nose and mouth. He was pulled down into the masses and held fast by the sheer weight of the bodies on top of him. He squirmed and kicked and snapped but he could barely move. They piled on him more and more, weighing him down, making it almost impossible to breathe. He felt rotting skin and bone press up against him on all sides. He felt their stringy, limp hair and their rough, leathery internal organs. He smelled the foul, rotting stench. Ryan's vision began to cloud. He was being smothered by a sea of dead flesh.

He heard voices calling out, his friends screaming for him. He heard gunshots that did nothing. He heard kicks and punches that met their targets with sickening thuds, but had no hope of stopping or slowing the onslaught of death. Ryan's mouth and nose and ears were plugged up by the press of bodies on all sides and the silence and blackness were almost welcome. He could feel himself losing consciousness, and with it came a strange serenity, a calming knowledge that when he did finally black out, he would never again wake up.

Then Ryan blacked out.

### Chapter 21

The first sensation was heat. Oppressive, suffocating heat that stole all the oxygen from the air. In the back of his mind, Ryan knew it was Evelyn's doing, but the rest of his brain was concerned with breathing freely once again.

The burden over his face and chest seemed to lighten, but he was still buried. Ryan sucked putrid air through his long nostrils and the smell was even worse than before, but it was air.

The heat intensified, but the more it did, the more freely Ryan was able to move. After a moment, he was able to open one eyelid and survey the carnage.

Ruby watched in awe behind Evelyn as she stood, both arms extended out over the mass of corpses. Body after body found itself immolating into ash and bone in mere seconds, and the fire spread from one corpse to the next in rapid succession.

It had started with a single shot from Evelyn's paintball pistol; she had been too impatient to fire more. She had stretched out her hands and fire had erupted instantly within the throng. Her face had been a furious scowl of rage and concentration ever since, and now the bodies were dropping one after another.

Exhaustion was setting in and Evelyn could feel her power weakening, her concentration and mental stamina quickly fading. But Ryan was still trapped. She let out a desperate scream of exertion and the flames shot higher and spread faster, but only for a moment.

The sound of the scream fell away and with it, Evelyn collapsed to the floor in an unmoving heap. Ryan wrenched himself free and then savagely dismembered the few corpses that remained.

The hallway was filled with smoke, fire, and piles of smoldering things that Ryan didn't want to take too close a look at. Ruby's purple line had long since disappeared, but the hounds had been caught in the first blast of Evelyn's flame and were no more.

Ruby was holding Evelyn in her arms as Ryan limped over, and he saw Daniel lying on the floor next to her, his head sticky with clotting blood.

The wolf faded from Ryan.

"Is she alright?" He asked hoarsely.

"I don't know." Ruby said quietly. "Ain't never seen her do that before. Ain't never seen anybody do that."

"But she's not-"

"No, but she's out cold. I got no idea when she'll wake up. _If_ she'll wake up."

Ryan sighed and looked at the almost lifeless form of the beautiful girl who had just single-handedly saved his life. Then he looked over at Daniel.

"What about him?"

"Got his head slammed against the wall when they were closing in on us. It's bad, and he's out, but I think he'll live. We've just got to get 'em both out of here."

Ryan nodded and took Evelyn's hand in his own. Her skin was cool.

The glass from the windows above them exploded inward and a huge brown shape barreled into Ruby and Evelyn. Ryan heard a dull thud as Ruby's head slammed into the linoleum, and the next thing he knew, he was being dragged violently through the window and into the snowy courtyard.

Grayle stood over him, his hot breath sending wisps of cloud out into the freezing night. Ryan looked up at him with hate brimming in his eyes.

"WHY?" Ryan screamed at him from the snow.

Grayle let the brown fur fade from him and stood before Ryan as a man. He smiled cruelly. "Why didn't I kill you at your friend's house?" He asked in a gravelly voice.

Ryan nodded.

"You were still human." The man replied simply. "I wanted to feel your blood run down my throat, but not the blood of a boy, the blood of a wolf. I can kill a human any time I want, but I want to kill a wolf. I want the fight. The blood."

Ryan looked up at him, and when replied, he did so quietly, almost at a whisper. "You'll get it."

Gray and brown fur sprouted almost simultaneously, and Ryan launched himself out of the snow and straight for the brown werewolf. Ryan hit his target and the two tumbled to the ground in the silent courtyard, clawing and biting fiercely. His first instinct had been to dive back into the building and make sure his friends were alright, but he knew Grayle would never let him get that far. Ryan had to finish this here and now.

Snow continued to fall into the rectangular courtyard in spinning flakes that made their way lazily from the sky to the ground. There was no wind, no birds, no crickets, only stillness and silence as the two monsters fought to the death.

Grayle sank his claws into the muscle of Ryan's chest and flung him headlong into the wall. Glass shattered and stone smashed as Ryan collided with it, and Grayle's claws had ripped out large holes from the flesh of his torso. Ryan shook himself and tried to clear his head as Grayle attacked again and slammed him back up against the wall. Ryan roared in frustration and pain and Grayle snarled in triumph.

Ryan shoved at Grayle's body and flung him away, and then pounced on him where he landed as he delivered a savage slash across the muzzle. Grayle hissed and his hand shot up to grab Ryan around the throat and he held him there. Ryan scrabbled and clawed at the hand blocking his windpipe, but the grip was too strong. Grayle waited until the lack of oxygen was almost too much, then he spun Ryan to the ground and slammed him into the snow.

The more experienced werewolf leapt onto Ryan's back and dug in his long claws. Ryan roared in agony once again, but was cut short by Grayle bashing his head into the ground.

Ryan scrambled out from under the werewolf and looked back at the red streaks his blood had left in the snow. It seemed like it was all his blood. Ryan leapt back at Grayle and caught him by the throat as he drove his hand forward and hammered the brown body against the stone architecture.

Grayle kicked at Ryan's injured chest and Ryan lost his grip and stumbled onto all fours. The older monster was on him in a flash, and grabbed him with both hands before he bashed him against the hard trunk of the dead tree.

Ryan crumpled to the ground and Grayle kicked at his head once, twice, three times. Blood seeped into Ryan's eyes and the world became hazy and out of focus. He twisted to the side and Grayle's next kick missed and sent him off balance. Ryan sprang up, half blind, and tackled Grayle once more. He clamped his jaws down on the werewolf's shaggy neck and felt his teeth pierce flesh until they struck bone.

Grayle roared in anguish and grasped Ryan's head in his hands as he tried to pry Ryan's jaws apart. He was stronger and tougher than Ryan and the younger werewolf couldn't keep his grip. He felt his mouth forced open and detach from his prey, and then he felt it open wider and wider. Grayle had his neck out of Ryan's jaws, but he continued to pull them apart just the same. Ryan felt the muscles stretch and become taught and refuse to go any farther. Then Grayle pushed them farther.

The pain that shot through Ryan's head was excruciating, and with what little strength he had left, Ryan finally managed to twist his head out of Grayle's grasp. Ryan flailed blindly with his claws as he staggered backward. He stumbled back to the tree and leaned against it, knowing that any moment Grayle would be on him again.

Ryan had barely a second's reprieve before the other werewolf kicked him hard in the small of the back and sent Ryan's head and chest slamming into the tree once again. Ryan slumped, exhausted and bleeding to death out of more open wounds than he could count. The snow around the tree bore large, dark splotches of his blood.

Grayle spun him around and wrapped a clawed hand around Ryan's throat, pinning his head and neck to the trunk of the tree. This time, Grayle held him there, and Ryan felt life slipping out of him.

He was angry: angry to have come so far just to fail. Angry that the sacrifices of Miles and Ruby and Daniel and Evelyn would mean nothing. Angry that this man, who gave no more thought to killing than Ryan gave to breathing, would probably wake up tomorrow without a care in the world, and Ryan would never wake up at all.

Ryan was angry that he hadn't been able to save Dr. Webster, and that he wouldn't be there to help Evelyn through the loss if it turned out the doctor hadn't survived. Ryan was angry that he hadn't been given enough time to atone for what he had done to Frank Spalding; that he would die a murderer. Most of all, Ryan was angry that with him dead, he had no way of protecting the people closest to him. He had no power over the safety of his family or Eli. Or Vanessa.

In fact, it was her face that Ryan saw as the lights began to go out. He thought of the first time they had ever met: in the lunch line in first grade. Girls had been gross, but Vanessa had never seemed to have that problem. They sat down with their milk cartons and began discussing the merits of each Ninja Turtle. Eli had joined them a few moments later and thrown in his two cents. Vanessa had smiled.

Something took hold of Ryan: something far deeper and far stronger than Grayle's hand. Ryan couldn't see, he couldn't breathe, and he could barely move, but it was enough. With all the strength he had left, Ryan sank each and every one of his claws into the sinewy muscle of Grayle's hand and arm. He sank them in as deep as they would go, and then he ripped them back out and took with him as much flesh as he could.

Grayle roared in pain and instinctively released his grip on Ryan's throat. He staggered back and cradled his bloody arm next to his chest.

Ryan's senses began to return to him and he sucked in deep lungfuls of freezing night air. He knew he had to recover faster than Grayle if he wanted to live.

Ryan staggered over to the werewolf and grabbed him. He slammed Grayle, headfirst, through the nearest window. It shattered, and Grayle roared again as the shards of glass buried themselves deep in his neck and chest. Ryan ran him through the next window, and the next, until Grayle's head was covered in blood and glass, fur matted and sticky. Then Ryan began to slash at him. He slashed at his eyes and muzzle and his neck and his chest and he slashed and slashed until the snow was crimson, this time with Grayle's blood. Then he slashed some more.

After a moment, Ryan realized that Grayle had stopped fighting back. He was simply lying there, unmoving. He could see that the monster was still alive; its ragged, bloody chest rose and fell slowly with each strained breath. Ryan knew that as soon as Grayle turned back to human form, his wounds would heal. If Ryan was going to kill him, it had to be here and now.

He lifted Grayle's limp form off the ground and held it aloft by the throat, ready to take the life of the thing that had taken so much from him. He pulled back his paw with its blood-soaked claws and prepared to strike.

Ryan was ready. He was poised to do it. This was the only opportunity he would ever have to end once and for all this monster's reign of blood and death. Ryan was ready, and then Spalding's face flashed in his mind's eye.

Ryan dropped his hand. He knew he couldn't kill this man, not even for the things he had done to Ryan and his life, to his future. Spalding's face still haunted him, and Ryan could not bring himself to kill again. Grayle began to stir and his eyes flickered slowly open. They locked onto Ryan, then narrowed cruelly.

Blood and skull fragments exploded out of the side of Grayle's head and spattered all over the far wall as the gunshot echoed in the courtyard. The light left the werewolf's yellow eyes and his head lolled back on his neck. He was dead.

Ryan spun around to the shattered windows Grayle had pulled him out of. Lying weakly in the snow was Evelyn, Daniel's special silver gun with wooden grips smoking in her hand.

He dropped the corpse and watched as it reverted slowly, peacefully, back into the human Grayle. All of the wounds pulled themselves together and healed, all except the silver bullet still lodged in his skull.

Ryan released his grip on the wolf and felt the slashes and bruises on his own body disappear. He was sore and aching all over, and he could barely stand, but he was no longer bleeding to death.

He collapsed in exhaustion and dragged himself through the snow as he made his way back to Evelyn and the smoldering corridor. Ryan reached out and grasped her hand, both of them panting from the effort.

"I couldn't do it." He said.

"I know." She replied softly.

They lay there in the snow for a long time, hardly even feeling the cold. Finally, Ryan spoke again, his words coming between gasping breaths.

"Do you want to maybe go out sometime?"

Evelyn scoffed and dropped her head, then raised it again, smiling, exhausted. "Can you think of a second date that will top this?" She asked.

Ryan laughed weakly. "I really hope not."

They helped each other to slide back down into the hallway. Ruby and Daniel were still unconscious, but still alive.

"Can you walk?" Ryan asked.

"I can if you can."

They hobbled together, painfully slowly, down the hall. They passed the carnage of countless bodies, but did their best to remain focused on their goal: the door at the end of the hall. With only a few feet to go, Evelyn collapsed and Ryan fell with her.

"I can't." She said. "I can barely move. You've got to find him...save him."

Ryan stared into her green eyes. "I will."

He helped her to the edge of the door and propped her up against the wall. He pressed the pistol into her hand. "If I don't come back, whatever's through that door...go down swinging."

She smiled weakly up at him and nodded. Ryan's eyes ran over every detail of her face as he tried to etch each contour into his mind's eye. He swallowed hard and blinked away the beginnings of a tear as he leaned forward to press his lips against Evelyn's forehead. The temperature of her skin skyrocketed when he made contact, but he held it anyway. After a moment he felt the heat fade away and Ryan pulled back to look at the young girl in his arms. Her eyes had fluttered closed and once again she had slipped into unconsciousness. Ryan was on his own.

He put a weary hand to the heavy door and felt the rhythmic pounding reverberate through. He pushed with what little strength he had left, and the door gave way. Ryan pulled himself over the threshold.

### Chapter 22

Steel. Grease. Blood. Ryan found himself on a metal catwalk above a large industrial space. It looked like an underground factory, with big automated machines and different assembly lines each performing specific tasks. The pounding they had been hearing all night came from these machines, whose functions Ryan could only guess at. However, this was not a normal factory. Ryan's first clue had been the bodies.

Suspended upside down above a large vat were six fresh corpses. Wide rivulets of blood dripped from their eviscerated torsos and slit throats. It ran down their dangling arms and dripped from their fingertips into the vat below, which collected the blood and sent it to the other machines.

At the other end of the factory space were stacks of large bricks of white and yellow and other pale-colored powders. The narcotic hybrid.

This was Hess' production site. This was where they synthesized Vain. Ryan was putting it together, piece by piece. The bodies in the morgue were the ones that had already been drained of blood. Ryan couldn't help but wonder: where did the bodies come from? Where was Hess getting these people? And where was Dr. Webster? Had he already been killed and drained of blood? Where did they store the people that were still alive?

Ryan had no time to wonder. A brutal kick connected with the side of his head and sent Ryan into a daze. He looked up at the hazy figure and readied himself to transform. He had beaten vampires before, he could take Hess.

The figure, however, did not belong to Hess. It belonged to Robert Webster.

"What?" Ryan asked, still dazed.

"I really am sorry, Ryan," He began, "that you've made such progress in denying your true nature. Hess could use a man like you. It's why I healed you when you first showed up at the hospital. A power like yours...it shouldn't be locked away, it's not meant to be caged. Trying to contain something like that, it can corrupt the mind, drive a man to madness."

"Speaking of corruption..." Ryan spat as his head cleared.

"I told you when we first met, the distinction between good and evil isn't as obvious as the distinction between human and wolf."

"I thought you at least understood there _was_ a difference." Ryan shot back.

Webster looked at him with an amused smile playing about his lips. The smile faded as quickly as it had appeared, and it was replaced by a set jaw hanging below narrowed eyes. "I thought that way once. Until I learned the truth. You see, when I was doing my residency, I had a wife. We were very much in love, but then she got very sick very quickly. I had the power to save her, but I couldn't do it. I was terrified of my power, terrified that something would go wrong and I would kill her, or even that everything would go right, but I'd go off the deep end the moment I started using my powers for selfish reasons. I didn't want her to see me like that, crazed and power mad. And so I had no choice: I let her die. I let her die because I thought it was the right thing to do, that I was sticking to the almighty code of honor, that I was doing humanity a favor by denying who I truly was, denying the gifts I had been given. And do you know what? I even believed that for a while. For years I thought it was a sacrifice that needed to be made, but every day that passed I questioned that decision more and more...and the fundamentals behind that decision.

"Was it evil to let her die when I could have saved her? Or was it good to keep my powers in check? The two forces that have been at war since humans first set foot on solid ground: light and dark, truth and lies, help and harm, good and bad. And here I was, stuck in the middle, with one question: how do we do good, when for people like us, the _means_ of doing good requires us to step into the realm of evil? We can cage it and we can control it for a while, but eventually, everyone falls off the wagon. "

"What about the warehouse?" Ryan asked in frustration. "What about the people there that have devoted their lives to overcoming their human nature, their lust for power? The people that have chosen to do good? Everything that _you_ told me?"

"Those people? You? Ticking time bombs. Eventually everyone loses control. Everyone. So when our destiny is written in our genes, how are we supposed to survive in a world with rules that we, by our _very natures_ , cannot follow?

"The answer is simple, Ryan, and this is the truth I eventually discovered: we don't. The sermon I gave you at the waterfront? Calculated to be exactly what you needed to hear of course, but it's absolutely true...for _them_. Good and evil are humanity's rules and we are not human. We are something else. Melody Richman went mad trying to live as one of _us_ in a world with rules made by _them_. The rules _they_ have made don't... _can't_ apply to us. The people in that warehouse, the naïve minds that I myself mistakenly helped to shape, one day they'll learn that the rules don't apply to them. I only regret that it took me so long to learn the truth. Do you know how many people I watched die, Ryan? And for what? Words. Words like 'good' and 'evil', 'right' and 'wrong', with definitions and interpretations as variable as the wind. Humans need words like that to help them run their lives but we, _we_ have the power to write our _own_ words. To deny or to cage that power is an affront to who and what we are. We are gods that have chosen to live as monks! That is not the order of things."

Ryan had heard more than enough; disappointment and disgust written all over his face. "Doc, I'm going to give you props for the act at the warehouse. Really stellar, convincing stuff. And I'm going to applaud that whole little speech you just gave, very Blofeld. Did you practice that? Cause if not, I mean, wow, moving. But here's the truth: I've had a long night, and clearly you've gone bye bye. So if you're going to kill me, just kill me. I need the rest."

Webster smiled. "I won't lie to you, I've been carrying around this syringe of silver nitrate for a few days now, waiting for my chance to use it. Now however, I am at your mercy. The needle is in my pocket, and you can transform and rip out my throat long before I could ever reach it. You know what that feels like, don't you? To bite clean through a man's neck? So here I am, Ryan."

"I'm not going to kill you." Ryan replied through gritted teeth.

"No? Not even when I tell you how many people I've murdered at the hospital upstairs? They were fine, just a little sick, but I killed them. It's amazing how many lethal chemicals doctors are allowed to walk around with. Truth is, Hess' little blood empire wouldn't be half of what it is if not for all the fresh bodies I've provided him."

"Why would you help him? Why would you do that? Why betray us?" Ryan demanded.

"Because we, the special few, we've been given a world without rules, we get to make it our own. We've got a blank slate, we get to decide what's right and what's wrong. To rewrite the words. And me? I've decided that using our abilities to our full advantage, to obtain immeasurable power, that is very, very right. In a few months, this city will be at our feet. I told you at the warehouse: humanity's lust for power is infinite. If we're blessed with the means to obtain that power, why should we deny who we are?"

"The crate at the docks, it's got nothing to do with any of this, does it? And you sent Tom after it because he was the only one who could have discovered this little scheme without fighting through your goons."

Webster smiled again. "I honestly don't know what was in the crate. Something or other of Hess', I assume. Skin cream or tooth sharpeners, I don't know. The important thing was what you _thought_ was in the crate. And it occupied you five long enough for the ink to dry on the Kimble deal, didn't it? That was the real nail-biter. If you had found us out then, the whole thing could have gone up in smoke. But now the deal is done. After you kill me, even if you destroy this whole lab, production on Vain will slow for maybe a week at the outside."

"And the 'abduction'?" Ryan asked. "You knew we'd come looking for you, why lead us right to the operation?"

Webster shrugged. "I wanted out, Ryan. I wanted you all to believe I was dead. I was sick of all the whining. I was bored with the double life. Bored with feeding Hess information from the inside. I wanted to devote all of my energies to the operation, to expanding our power. I did indeed know you'd come looking, but I thought I could get away clean. I never gave you the credit of tracking the operation here. Even then I was sure you'd never be able to get past Hess' countermeasures. You've exceeded all of our expectations, Ryan, which is what makes so regrettable that you're still so naïve. Oh well. I didn't expect to die tonight, but now that you've made it here...I know a destiny when I see one. It'll be worth it too, to watch the power consume you just before you take that frenzied final bite. All it'll take is a little twist of the knife, a push over the edge..."

"You can't push me to do anything."

"Not even by telling you that it was I who destroyed Ruby's ingredients, so that the substitutes she used for your bracelet would break? That it was I who told Grayle exactly where to find you...only after the bracelet broke of course, I couldn't arouse suspicion. I tried to kill you. I put you in the crosshairs. I put Eli and Vanessa in the crosshairs. You _will_ kill me, Ryan. I can see it all over your face."

"I won't."

"That's your choice. You can wait for my cavalry to arrive, then you'll die one way or another. After you do, I promise you I will kill Eli and Vanessa. We can always use more blood. Then I'll find Evelyn, and I'll kill her too. She's becoming much too powerful to have working against us anymore. Someone will have to put a bullet to her sooner or later. Might as well be someone she trusts completely." He smiled.

Ryan felt a burst of strength course through his body and he transformed in the blink of an eye as he tackled Webster to the ground in front of the doorway and pinned him to the catwalk with one massive paw. The mad doctor simply smiled.

"There it is. There's the beast. There's your true nature. Here's my throat, Ryan, I can't make it any easier. Show me the killer we both know you are. This is our new world, Ryan. We make the rules! If I have to die for you to see that, this is one sacrifice I will gladly make. Come on! Think of the people I've killed, the hundreds! Think of the people I will kill, how they'll cry out for you to save them but you won't be able to because you couldn't bring yourself to take one little life. Or I suppose I should say, _another_ little life."

Ryan roared savagely and brought his snout within inches of the doctor's face. The werewolf's immense heart beat with the excited anticipation of the kill. Ryan breathed deeply, in and out, wondering what he himself was about to do. The doctor smiled still.

The wolf in his head urged him forward with a frantic desperation. Two inches more and he'd reach the throat. Two inches and he could get at the blood and the meat. Two inches and he could savor the sound of the prey's final breath gurgling out of a ragged, gaping hole in the neck.

Ryan felt his heart slow. He released the wolf and reverted back to human form. He didn't have it in him. He sat back on the cold steel catwalk and panted with exertion and adrenaline. He had beaten it.

In a flash, Webster sprang up and tackled him. Ryan's back slammed against the metal and his vision swam. Ryan saw now that it had all been a bluff: the doctor knew Ryan would never kill him, so all he'd had to do was wait until Ryan had let his guard down. It had worked.

Webster leapt on top of him and pressed a needle up against Ryan's throat. He felt the sharp metal of the syringe press against his neck, but it didn't break the skin. If Ryan transformed, the needle would prick him. If it pricked him, the compound would enter his bloodstream and carry the death-dealing silver to all his major organs in a matter of seconds. That was assuming it didn't cause his veins to burst open first. The two men stared at each other.

The doctor gave a mad snarl and tensed his arm to drive the needle into Ryan's neck. At the same time, Ryan grabbed the doctor's arm and tried to force it away. They struggled for a moment, but the night's exhaustion sapped the strength from Ryan's muscles in only a few seconds. In a few more, he knew he'd be dead.

Behind them, the door squeaked open and Webster looked up. It was just enough of a distraction for Ryan to shove the man's arm away and scramble out from under him. Webster rolled away and the syringe flew out of his hands and skittered across the catwalk, over the edge, and down into darkness.

In the doorway, still too weak to stand or even sit, was Evelyn. Tears flowed freely down her face and Ryan could tell she had heard every word the doctor had said. She looked Ryan dead in the eye. He gave a tiny shake of his head. She stared at him, then gave the smallest of nods.

Webster crawled toward the catwalk railing and propped himself up to sitting. The syringe had fallen and it was long gone. The doctor was finished. He simply sat there and smiled.

Evelyn used what was left of her strength to slide the gun across the metal grating. Ryan looked at it. Something was different.

He could feel it now: finishing this wouldn't send him over the edge, not as long as he had people there to grab him before he fell. When he had been ready to close his jaws around the doctor's throat, it had been about anger and hatred and revenge. This was about right and wrong. This was right.

No images of Frank Spalding flashed before Ryan's eyes, no questions of guilt or redemption. He could kill this man. Not for the things he had done to Ryan, but for what he had done to Ryan's friends. For betraying the trust of a frightened, hot-headed girl who barely even knew what trust was. Killing Webster would not atone for killing Spalding, but he knew now it wouldn't send him over the edge either. Spalding's death had caused Ryan more sleepless nights than he could count. He would sleep soundly tonight.

Ryan picked up the gun and pressed it to Webster's forehead.

"About time." Webster said. "What's this for? Redemption? Or is it just because you want to watch the light go out of my eyes? Or wait, for Spalding?"

Ryan was calm. Thoughts of Evelyn, of Eli, of Vanessa, of his mother.

"No. For _them_."

The gunshot echoed off the stone walls.

### Chapter 23

Daniel's black boots crunched on the powdery snow as he trudged slowly back towards them. It was the only sound in the stillness of the dark parking lot, except for the occasional creak of the van.

The rear double doors stood open to the freezing night air, but no one felt it. Miles leaned on the bumper and held his heavily bandaged arm close to his body. Ruby lay in the back of the truck, her injured leg propped up, next to the still-unconscious form of the telekinetic little girl. Ryan and Evelyn leaned against an open rear door, and each other.

He looked down at her face and tried to follow her gaze, but her eyes were unfocused and far away, staring off aimlessly into the snowy ground. Her cheeks had been dry of tears since the final bang of the gunshot. She hadn't looked at anyone or said a word. A large snowflake fell onto her forehead and Ryan brushed it away. She didn't move.

Daniel reached the van and turned, with the rest of them, to face the darkened hospital building. He stared down at the small detonator resting in his massive hands. He looked at it for a long while, then shook his head.

He handed it to Miles who didn't give a second thought to passing it straight on to Ruby, getting it out of his hands as quickly as possible.

Ruby grasped the detonator and began to sob anew. She clutched it in jeweled fingers and her thumb hovered over the black plastic switch. She caressed it for a moment, but then a fresh wave of grief overtook her and she dropped the device into Ryan's free hand.

He stared down at the collection of wires and plastic. Ruby's whispered cries brought tears of his own, and the detonator doubled and swam in his blurry eyes. His body shook gently with the silent sobs, and hot tears dropped to the frozen ground. He poised his finger over the switch and braced himself.

A warm hand slid over his and his fingers stopped. He looked down at Evelyn, whose gaze now met his. She slipped the detonator from his hand into her own and took a deep, ragged breath.

Ryan watched as a single tear from each eye welled up beneath the pools of green, then slid slowly down her sloping cheeks. She blinked, swallowed hard, and shuddered in Ryan's arms. Then she pressed the switch.

The boom was deafening, even from this distance. The ground shook beneath their feet as a plume of smoke and dust rose from the dark building. The structure shifted slightly, but did not collapse. Ryan trusted Daniel's expertise: the building itself would remain intact and unharmed, but the underground factory and the bodies they had piled inside had certainly been destroyed. The authorities would comb through the rubble and find the useless remains of a highly illegal Vain production site, but there'd be no trace left of a werewolf, any vampires, four gun-toting paranormal thugs, or a doctor who had once been a good, kind-hearted man before he had been corrupted by the evil around him and the power within him.

They stood in silence and stillness as they watched the gray smoke billow into the starry sky. Even when the sounds of sirens reached their ears, no one moved. No one except Evelyn.

She swallowed again and cleared her throat, then tossed the used detonator into the back of van. It clanged loudly against the metal floor and startled the other four out of their reverie.

"Come on." She said briskly as she grabbed the van keys out of Daniel's limp hand. "We're not out of breath yet."

### Chapter 24: Epilogue

Pine. Dampness. Dirt. The smells of the woods came to Ryan in an unfolding bouquet, and he inhaled them deeply.

The fire was working its way up to a blaze, and although it would have gone much faster with Evelyn to tend to it, she was still down by the lake and Ryan was sick of waiting. Evelyn had never been to the lake before, in fact she had never been camping or out with friends before. Ryan wanted to give her time to enjoy it.

With Eli's help, the tents had gone up in no time, and the two were now relaxing together in canvas chairs watching the sun set over the tree tops.

"Doesn't it keep you up at night?" Eli asked. "All the terrible stories Vanessa could be telling Evelyn right now?"

"Every night." Ryan replied.

"You know, even with girls, I still hate camping." Eli said.

"Me too."

"Then why are we here?"

"Because camping might suck," Ryan said "but I like the woods. It's peaceful here, out-of-the-way."

"And there are fewer things out here that want to suck the marrow out of your bones." Eli added.

"That too."

The shimmering orb of the sun dipped just below the trees and set them ablaze with a brilliant orange glow. Shadows lengthened and crickets began to warm up their wings for the evening's performance.

"So from now on, while you're off gallivanting around the criminal underworld, what are V and I supposed to do while you're gone?" Eli asked.

"You could do my homework."

Eli scoffed. "I don't do _my_ homework. There's no way I'm doing yours."

Ryan smiled.

"Do you think Vanessa is okay with all of this?" He asked after a moment.

"Why wouldn't she be?" Eli replied.

"I don't know..." Ryan's voice trailed off.

"Are _you_ okay with it?" Eli asked.

"With what?"

"Turning into a monster, fighting other monsters. Having like...a hundred percent more monster in your life than you used to."

Ryan thought for a moment. "Yeah." He replied simply.

"Oh. Good."

Evelyn and Vanessa started up from the lakeshore and Ryan closed his eyes as he let the last rays of daylight wash over him.

As he did, the phone buzzed in his pocket. He scanned the message and called to Evelyn. "Miles just found the location of the newest clinic. We're going to hit it."

"Daniel and Ruby already en route?" She asked.

Ryan nodded.

"Well let's go." She replied with a dazzling white smile as she started for the edge of the clearing.

Ryan hung back. "Keep a few s'mores warm for us. Gotta go save the city...again."

Vanessa rolled her eyes, but then locked them onto Ryan's. She gave a tiny nod and then a small, half-smile. It was Ryan's favorite of her smiles.

He smiled back, then turned and trotted to catch up with Evelyn. Together they made their way across the clearing and into the woods. Thirty feet through and they came to the shoulder of the highway where the Cherokee and Evelyn's motorcycle were parked.

"You want to follow me?" Ryan asked "Or..."

Evelyn swung a leg over the bike and started the engine.

"Howabout you see if you can keep up?"

Ryan grinned. He felt like he was up to the challenge.

The End.

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