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"He didn&039;t have a car," she answered proht?"

I made a face at her "But if Smith is responsible for the murders, he o out in public Too many people could seewhat?"

"Bloodstains? Cracked ?"

"Too recognizable," she said "A truck with a business logo on it, contractors, deliveries - "

"Right, it&039;s got to blend in, but not the sort of thing you&039;d drive for private stuff" I thought a minute, then an idea hit me "Like a police car Maybe it isn&039;t Smith! Maybe it&039;s Weems!"

"Gerry Get real Weems is your bete noir, and he&039;s a dickhead, but he&039;s not our guy"

"He was at the hospital" I ticked off arden-variety psycho, his trail confused by Wee my tracks all day, and every tie"

"All places you&039;d expect to see a cop investigating the sae because of Weems before now?" She put her hand on mine; it aretting distracted by this You&039;ve always been so da - "

That was the proble anyborn

I pulled away "I don&039;t think so I think you were picking up on his vibes, the sa with some ordinary, run-of-the-ht it was S to do with this I think you want it to be Weeht be an evil out there we haven&039;t seen before I get it, Ger: you want things to be cut-and-dried But noe knowit can&039;t be like that"

"Whatever" I turned away

"Don&039;t dismiss me, Gerry"

You know about that traditional conflict betolves and va

"Claudia, just because - "

"Sssh!" Claudia was pointing to the TV

The neas on A school bus, its driver, and six kids werefroot the fake address at the Point, a murder at the Willows, a body in the harbor Throw in thepets, and we have someone with a fa neighborhoods to cover"

"He needs space, and he needs a place where people won&039;t hearscrea at thehat&039;s faanized psychopath, which is bad"

"The houses are too close together, here and here," I said, pointing out two neighborhoods "That leaves the warehouses in the industrial park down at the Point and the coal plant down here" I pointed to a neighborhood that was near, by water, but on the other side of town, by land

"A school bus is going to stick out in either place," Claudia said "Is he going to take them out to sea?"

"If he is, we&039;re pretty well screwed," I said "Protective coloring - where can you take six crying kids and a school bus where no one will notice?"

We looked at each other, then sihborhoods we had just rejected A short distance fro field, was the middle school, now empty for the holidays

It&039;s not that we need the h that helps It&039;s easier to run around as a hen there aren&039;t many people around It&039;s easier to pick up a faint trail with the dust settled from the day It&039;s not that we need the moon, but somehow, it makes it easier for me, the same way the sun takes the poison out of vamps like Claudia You&039;d have to talk to our scientists who are working out exactly hoe Fangborn work, but if you think of it like a vulture&039;s bare head helping to kill the bacteria they pick up, or photosynthesis, taking nutrients froht, that&039;s probably close All I know is that Claudia couldn&039;t taste the blood and clean it, cauterize the wound, and nue her up And in the saeeks - I get recharged by the ht to work Makes it easier on us all

The moon was full and low on the horizon as we parked down the street froain: check the school and then call the cops if we find anything

Siht If eren&039;t already too late

"Got the gear?" I asked Claudia

She nodded, held up the leash - her excuse for being out with a very large dog - and a charged cell phone As for me, while I hate what people inflict on their pets - birthday parties, pedicures, Halloween costu craze And grateful to the guy who invented stretch fabrics: ie track suit e back to human and don&039;t want to be buck-naked

Claudia doubled the knots on her bootlaces, tied her hair back, and ent into the schoolyard

The bus was there, all right, on the side, cold and silent as an eht, but who notices a school bus outside a school? The schoolyard had been badly plowed, so there were no clear tracks, but it only took me a minute to find the basement door they&039;d used, the lock broken

The reek hit ot the door open This tie

The rush of adrenaline and endorphins and other horh evolutionary growth in an instantNature wouldn&039;t be so cruel as to put this burden on us without compensation The bloodlust didn&039;t hurt, either, and it was only Claud&039;s warning hand on ht of it Smith&039;s spoor orse than any I&039;d ever s the traces of new linoleum, old wax, and textbooks It was nearly unbearable to ht, a bloodthirsty, simple joy, cleared of all human doubt and fear, overwhelmed even that:

It was tilanced up at Claud, as down on one knee; the reek was hitting her just as badly It was always harder for her; vamps don&039;t have the same chemical buffer that protects wolves Her skin took on a violet cast visible even in the shadows, and her eyes ide and bright Her facial features broadened, her nose receded, and her fingers lengthened

She stood up, shook herself, and nodded As she packed leaht on the fine pattern of snakescale, an armor of supple, thickened skin Snakes have always been associated with healing and transformation - there&039;s a reason they&039;re on the staff of Asclepius - but they&039;ve got a rep for danger, too

I whined and stared at her neck Her hand went up, and she found the pearls she&039;d forgotten to take off

"Thankths," she said, with a slight hiss Still largely huue make speech aard, but not i, and nodded

I led the way, as stealthy as a shadow I cast around, stopped, panted, and tried again, but with no luck There was no one single track to pick up Sh for the basement to be so saturated with his stench that I could barely breathe

I couldn&039;t detect the children I hoped eren&039;t too late

Claudia nodded She pointed at the first door, and we both listened Nothing

She tried it; locked solid

The next was an unlocked closet The stink was there, too, but less The bus driver was stashed in there There was a pulse, faint and fading

Claudia fanged down, called 911 We continued

The next door opened silently; I could ses No way to tell Claud, but she pointed to the duct tape across the lock, and I nodded We went in

The children were there Even under Smith&039;s foulness, I could tell they were alive I felt a surge of delight

They were drugged, only half-awake; a light on the playground offered just enough illumination for a normal to see forms without detail My nose told me of full diapers, fear, and baby shampoo

Smith was nowhere around We went quietly, just in case

"Hang on," Claudia said She Changed back about halfway, just enough to keep her powers on deck, but not so far that the first thing the kids saas a pale purple lady with no nose and very big teeth

She went over to theet you fixed up and we&039;ll get you ho to do so, but he&039;s really, really friendly Chewie, come!"

That was ht so the kids would focus on me That way, they&039;d be less afraid and they wouldn&039;t notice Claudia practicing her leech-craft I spendparty tricks, but whenever I fell over, the kids laughed, so it was okay And as soon as Claudia got one kid untied, her razor nails dancing scalpels over the duct tape, I was there, his new best friend, and they were so busy pattingtheir wounded hands, she got to work, biting their wrists, narcotizing the pain, neutralizing their terror, sucking out S theirto the blood and e, nearly all trace of humanity lost from her features even as she healed the little ones

She&039;d just finished the last one when he was on her Even as I picked up on the fresh scent - snowfish heads - S human

If I kneas there, it meant Claudia knew, too She shoved the kid toward me as Smith landed on her She rolled with him as far away from us as she could

In spite of Claudia&039;s rabbed the last one by the hood of her jacket and gently pulled her the rest of the way to the group I stood between the the kids to stand behind e wild ani in and ripping Smith apart, but I had to keep the children safe And there&039;s not ed; for all her tweedy skirts and bookishness, she&039;s as ood fight and the sonofabitch kne to use a knife: Claudia would need a week on the roof to recover frolad of the dark, that the children&039;s eyes weren&039;t as sharp as mine, that they couldn&039;t see the a Maybe Sborn, enetic anoy she expended fill the roohteous violence in the cause of justice -

I let out a lol; there was too born in New England was Changing next to ed An unholy transfor never before seen in the world as I knew it: evil taking on the shape of a olf

If I&039;d had tiht, I would have been slowed by what shouldn&039;t have been happening, by as i I almost burst out of my skin I bunched up and launched myself at Smith

Claudia threw herself out of the way as I bowled the other wolf out of the rooet a purchase on the cold, polished cement floor With a scrabble of claws, I was up, but he was just a second faster and knocked ut and jerkedhis hot breath and drool on ger than he was and he alht him, barely, by the tender tip of his nose and the soft skin under his jaw Teeth slid through flesh and I held on; he tried to push me aith his front paws, but wasacross my belly

I smelled my own blood, but held on for dear life He couldn&039;t pull out of o

The door opened and cold air washed over us I heard a shout and recognized Weeain I could s to shoot

Well, I couldn&039;t let hio and Shts flashed through rab hie If he knocked Weems out of the way, or took a bullet or six, so ht past Weeht as a olf any more than I could The prospect of decades of lab experiments made a life sentence at Cedar Junction look like a week at Sandals

Sweat-soaked polyester, terror, boiled coffee, and roast beef: Wee Freddy&039;s If I planted a dirty, doggy paw in his face as I chased after Smith, I&039;m sure it was an accident

Smith was nowhere to be seen as I raced down the street away fro a trail of blood that any Cub Scout could have followed, and his scent was so strong there h snowy backyards and vaulted a chain-link fence: Christ meats and seafood wasn&039;t even a ht hteenth-century houses decorated with candles and garlands

The tear in my belly was bad; I could feel the shock of the cold air through fur even as my muscle re-knit itself There was a sharp pain whenever IThe icy snow, dirty with sand and road salt, packed itself in between the pads of ait Blood - mine and Smith&039;s - was etting heavier, though: S down In spite of er to end this

But part of me hoped Smith would never stop If he stopped, I&039;d kill him, and my job would be finished Then I&039;d have to think about as happening I wasn&039;t sure if my frail human brain could deal with it

I leapt onto a back porch, tensed, then sailed over the back of the deck onto the sidewalk of Derby Street I skidded on the icy bricks of the crosswalk, and barelythe breeze as the SUV swerved past

The waterfront opened up in front of me The heavy clouds parted for an instant and the full ht down Derby Wharf, which stretched out a quarter of a mile into the harbor

Unless S cold water toward the winking lights of Marblehead, he had nowhere to go except back to rinned, as only a wolf drunk on power can

There was no one out, and I was glad; it was usually a place for evening strolls, the ainst the snow-banks I padded down the wide gravel path, catching ht

Save hihthouse laether and reducingmy eyes lowered and narrowed, my ears back, Iat hiht Smith with his head still up, and seized hith I had His ht tore his flesh off in my mouth Hot blood poured and he dropped dead at ht have been a predator with a hero&039;s weapons, but I was a hero with true purpose

I spat out the fur and gore as the ht flooded the wharf and harbor Steam rose from the wounds of the dead wolf, blood black on the snoer fro slain one of my own kind, almost knocked me off my feet, and it was possible I was the first one ever in history to have experienced it

Evil just doesn&039;t exist in the Fangborn At least, it hadn&039;t before now

I threw , the co

But somewhere in the back of my brain, the part that stays human, I kneas the last time I&039;d feel that way

On Christmas Eve, Claudia found me down in the basement of my house It&039;s finished with mats on the floors and walls so we can train in private

"That&039;s so up there," she yelled She earing her T-shirt with the bull&039;s-eye printed over her heart, the one that says, GO AHEAD AND TRY IT, BUFFY

I was flaked out on the floor in three layers of sweats, my headphones on, music turned to eleven I considered her stateer

She came over to the stereo, cranked it up to fourteen or twenty so I had to pull the headphones off, then she switched off the CD She glanced at the player

"Disintegration Nice And have you been down here since yesterday,to taketo behave like an adolescent"

"I am an adolescent" And I aet that Gerry, you peed on Wee to do at the time

After I&039;d returned, still wolfself, to the school, Claudia had soldher dog when she saw the school bus Not wanting to feel like a fool if it wasn&039;t thechildren, she&039;d explored, then found the kids The kids, still under her che had attacked the nice lady&039;s doggie, who chased both the bad guys away Weems later found Smith&039;s body at the wharf, dead, without a mark on him save for his stitched-up arm

She knelt beside me "Gerry, Smith is a shock; I buy that I was rattled, too It&039;s scary as Hell The fa up with the discussion, and none of the historians have anything like this Ever"

"I&039;et that this is major It&039;s just that"

I took a breath; it was even harder to say out loud than it was to adhteous ones, and that whatever we hunted was alrong No doubts, never I always thought it was the payoff for the e do" It also meant, no matter what my opinion, that Weems was at least nominally on our side

She cocked her head "You evity?"

"Yeah"

"And the rush that coe?"

"Wellyeah"

She frowned "You&039;re young and you&039;re being greedy and you&039;re forgetting the First Lesson"

I scowled "&039;The work is the reward&039; You sound like Grandpa"

"There&039;s a good reason for that He was right" She hunkered down against the wall next to me "Look, everyone reaches a crisis of faith at soure out if we had the right to live outside hu the difference between law and justice It&039;s part of the life It makes us understand what it is to be human, why that&039;s precious and to be protected Norh life in doubt"

"We&039;re not huet the doubt, too"

She shook her head "We&039;re closer to theically and spiritually We need that connection And you know that killing Sborn had ever killed Fangborn before No Fangborn had ever manifested pure evil beforeI couldn&039;t turn off the voice intiborn, duty, honor, and all that crap I listened A lot of it ht I need tilad I got here before you got into the Nine Inch Nails" Relief flooded her features, which told ht I looked "So You packed?"

"No It won&039;t take " This year, our Christmas present to each other was tickets to Aruba Expensive, but we both needed the sunshine right now

She nodded, then eyed ht?"

"Probably I gotta go for a walk, first Clear ht, but fro around Any har as I reet while in human form reappears when I revert back to human form

"Good I&039;ll see you there And Gerry?"

"Yeah, Claud?"

She wrinkled her nose "Take a shoould you?"

I flipped her the bird again, and got my jacket She smiled as she left, and I knew I had her convinced That&039;s the good thing about having a shrink for a sister: you learn what they look for and you can give it to the to take away loves I probably didn&039;t need so ht, I just couldn&039;t get war time and found h to let the holiday lights of the street fall behind id dark Bloodstains blurred the snohich had been trae dog A fierce hellhound roahthouse beam skim the surface of the dark water Listened to the soft slap of waves against the stone wharf Anyone with a lick of insight could feel the remnants of the power that had been expended here

In our fa like this, but now I had to wonder: Who else had we missed? Or if this was a really new develop I kneas that my certainty about my place in the world - my armor and my sword - was shattered

I felt the silence all around me, city noises muffled by the snow, and tried to find the botto, the loss of faith like the loss of a limb I felt broken and made a fool of, mocked by the universe for my belief

I took a deep breath, the kind you take at the crossroads when the dark rubby soul As I watched the obsidian water, I took another breath and realized that if I couldn&039;t e the leap of faith that Claudia described, then I had to make a leap of another kind

Down the street fro&039;s Eye It&039;s a local joint; there&039;s no television and they pull the best pints in town

Annie works there nights

It was about half full, the folks ere getting one more drink in before Mass and the ones whose faers on bar stools

"Jeez, Gerry, you been sick or so? You look kinda peaky" She set down a coaster in front of uess" I suddenly rerowth of beard, and kept my jacket zipped Hell

"I bet I read about Claudia in the paper You s I&039;ve learned to live with is the fact that I&039;ll never get credit for being on the scene, for doing the job "I worry about her, but she&039;s good at taking care of herself" Then I couldn&039;t resist, sweats or no "And besides Cheouldn&039;t let anything happen to her"

She put the dark beer down in front of me, a perfect half inch of froth at the top "No He&039;s a sweetie"

I feltthe perfume of Annie&039;s ankles, her hand on the back of ht We&039;d been co home from work and I&039;d still been intoxicated by the kill e ran into Annie It&039;s one of ed "Depends Like people, really You gotta take them one at a tiht now, coffee, a drink, anything, or so help o red again: that was not what I meant to say It was toodown the bar

Suddenly, the bottomless water seemed a better choice

"I&039;d prefer to start with a drink, maybe dinner," she said slowly "That is, if you&039;re really, actually, finally getting the guts to ask me out?"

"Uhyeah" I sed "That okay?"

"Yeah But it took you long enough" She glanced at uys, you&039;re all just pussycats You aren&039;t always a big pussycat, are you, Gerry?"

Mostly I&039;ain," I vowed "How&039;s toht?"

"Can&039;t" She looked at oing snowshoeing at Bradley Pal"

I wrinkled my brow An odd tradition, but nice, I s&039;pose

She blew out her cheeks "You know I&039;ht? I like Christmas, but I observe the Solstice"

She looked a little defensive, but I could barely contain myself I forced myself to take a deep breath "Trust me when I say that mixed relationships are not a probleave h "If you inviteBut I have to leave by noon, because I promised Kelly I&039;d take her shift at the shelter so she can be with her faet the words out fast enough

"Claudia won&039;t et ho me to ask Annie out froood people, not an evil bone in her body," Claudia&039;d said And Claudia knows bones, good and evil

"I&039;ll be there" Annie so to jelly "I made a batch ofthem"

Into nature, civic- like an idiot, so I drank the rest of ht then and there,with every Christmas carol ever written