Title: Si Omni Bestiae Viri Sunt ("If all beasts are men"). This is VDDOff VI, but is pseudo-incomplete – not all is resolved. Most resolution of this section of the plot will occur in VDDOff VII, which will be sort of like the Part B to this one’s Part A.

Rating: Strongish PG to a lowish PG-13. Mortal weres are allergic to silver. It burns, man. What happens when you get burnt? Plus swearing.

Summary: Two teenagers from Chicago seek a woman in Wolfblood. They find her, but every bargain has a price.

A/N: The first scene – Mr. Pednowski’s accent is supposed to be VERY deep Southern, in the style of Marvel Comics’ Rogue.

New notes on dialogue here: mortal weres have their own lingo. An ‘overbred puppy’ (sometimes shortened to just ‘overbred’ when used as an adjective) is an immortal were. It’s derogatory. ‘Mutt’ is a derogatory word for a mortal were. Everybody ought to know what ‘fairy’ means, ‘cause that’s regular slang. I use it in both senses of the word, because I love bad puns, and because people are jerks.

Also, I use the phrase ‘the moon’ at least twice here; what it refers to is a given were’s change-moon, rather than one specific part of the cycle.

Time period: June 22-24, 2003. Aurora and Ukyo meet with Lilith on the 23, and they go after Wolfblood on the 24. I even checked the lunar cycle for Stef’s mood, so don’t try to catch me there.

( ) It’s good, and as a gift to her – because I got a cameo in one of her stories – I’m putting some of her characters in this VDD offshoot. Let’s hope I don’t want to use them again, because that would be copyright infringement (I think).
The following characters belong to Aurora-chan: Aurora Ebony (I changed her last name to Adams, just for kicks) and Ukyo Hameshima. These people aren’t really mine, so bow down to the magnificence that is Aurora Light. Any OOC-ness is my fault, so be ready with a frying pan. Hugs and plushies, Aurora! Er. And they were supposed to be cameos. Whoops!

"As ya know, Miz Haht, Ah can’t pay ya ‘till Ah know that were is dead…"

"Yes. I do know."

"And Ah certainly can’t pay ya if the scrawny mutt’s gone back to his overbred fairy of a father."

"Don’t overuse the word ‘fairy,’ Mr. Pednowski. The elves might object."

He laughs, deep and booming, like a stereotypical Southern right-wing Christian who works hard and drinks harder and whose daughter is going to have a shotgun marriage in four years. He isn’t; he runs Wolfblood, and he doesn’t have a daughter. She died in Wolfblood four years ago, after bearing a son at sixteen whom she left on the street. She made sure to get pregnant right after she was bitten, so her father waited to shove her in the arenas.

"Ah don’t think they’re around to object, Miz Haht."

"I wouldn’t know. I just kill them."

He chuckles again. "Right y’are, ma’am."

"Do you want me to hunt the werewolf in question to his current location?" You wouldn’t know I had a degree in preternatural studies at a local college, from the way I act. Scholarship material, said the Hunters in the Midwest, and they sent me to infiltrate the network started here that’s reaching its tentacles across the States.

"Of course," he answers, and pulls out a cigar, lighting it with the easy familiarity of a man who’s been smoking the same brand for years.

I’ve never understood the appeal, myself, and I’ve always wondered at the phenomenon that young men always smoke cigarettes – and yet, those same men, when they are middle-aged, smoke cigars. Where is the transition? Is there something about cigars that makes them appeal to rich, middle-aged men who are going to go hire a hooker in the nearest red district and take her home after a nice bout of killing their business competitors?

"Has there been a change in contract?" I must make sure – when I was younger, I was cheated out of a large sum of money through a change in contract in similar circumstances.

He looks at me, somewhat amused, over the smoking end of his cigar. "Ya can look, if ya want. No changes." I don’t trust him farther than I can throw him, no matter how far it is, but if I press the point too hard, he won’t trust me, and that is worse.

"Is there any other business that requires discussion?" I look around his office as I say it, taking in the wolf-head hung on the wall, a grisly reminder of how Mr. Pednowski makes his living. It’s probably his daughter’s, knowing him.

"Ah wouldn’t think so." He chews on the end of his cigar a bit, and I nearly gag from the stench. I find it amusing that I find the scent of blood nothing remarkable, but the reek of tobacco odious.

"Then I will take my leave." I turn, open the wood-veneered door, and walk out. I know where all the doors are, and I take the ones that lead me into the cage-rooms, where Mr. Pednowski’s ‘fighters’ are kept.

Pednowski believes that all werewolves are animals, and that all vampires are feral leeches with a remnant of a mind. He’s gotten good at finding the ones who will prove him right under the pressures of the arena. I’ve watched the fights at Wolfblood, before – vampires, latching onto their werewolf opponents, sinking their fangs deep into flesh until the other bleeds into the yellow-tan sands on the ground, jugular veins ripped open. I don’t understand the appeal, myself.

They often sleep in cages of silver, his werewolves – some whimper, their fur streaked with burns or scars where their bloodied, wounded flesh touched the bars; others lie sleeping, the rest of the dying and exhausted and doomed.

The room reeks of sickness and fear and pain. A few of them cower from me; others snarl at the bars, recognizing me.

At the end of the row is a one who is still in human form. There is a single wound, on her back, probably from when she was captured by Pednowski’s men. They are not known for being gentle with the werewolves they capture.

She is lying on the floor of her cage, black hair a river of ebon strands on the cement beneath, covering her naked body like an Indian-Asian Lady Godiva. She curls in the fetal position, and her breath is too fast to be the patterns of sleep.

I kneel in front of her cage. "How long have you been here?"

She turns, looks at me. Her eyes are cold, and yet, warm.

"A few days," she answers.

"What’s your name?"

"What is yours?"

I smile. She’s clever – even though she is trapped, she still seeks the upper hand against me.

"Ilyanna Hart."

"Elena Shenoy."

"Good luck, Elena Shenoy. Fight well," I tell her.

"You’re not going to let me out?" She sounds so upset, as though she actually held some hope.

"I don’t need to. You’ll get out on your own." I should know. She has the same light in her eyes that Ellen did, when she made sure to become pregnant right after she was bitten. The light of a survivor. Liam Donnelly had the same light in his eyes, when he stared up at me as I aimed my gun at him bare weeks ago. I have it. We are the ones who wait, and bide our time, to survive. We are the ones who suffer any humiliation to see the light of freedom in the end.

It is a sad day indeed, when one of us must kill another, but I am not afraid. It is either me or him, and that same quality that is in both of us dictates that it must be him.

Wouldn’t you think an entire year would let Wynter calm down? I’m nineteen now – nineteen and a half, really, if you want to get horribly, childishly technical about it; my birthday’s in late August. Shaaron would be ashamed that I care so much, and I’m not sure I’m completely rid of the guilt I get from knowing that.

But Wynter… there’s a lot to be said about having your twin hate you, and there isn’t a lot of it that’s good. I know why; that’s simple – I’m not human, and not a Hunter, anymore. It’s difficult for anyone outside a clan to understand, but that’s basically the gist of it: if you’re not human or one of Us, you are one of Them, and we do not like Them. It’s only the fact that I was once one of the ‘Us’ that makes me so dangerous – don’t you think there’s a lot I could tell that could lead to the destruction of my family? But I’m not going to. I don’t betray my people – even if they have me.

Sign on the highway is for Athens, Georgia. Isn’t that where Keveign lives? He left us in Boston a month ago, and we haven’t really heard from him since – though I think Charon’s been corresponding with him, occasionally, and I sometimes write postscripts, asking about new information about Wolfblood. He lives so near it…I’d call him an idiot, but I know he’s retaking engineering courses there, before he goes off to grad school. It’s stupid to be so close to a place that’s got a bounty on your head.

Even so, he said in his first letter that if anyone wanted to drop by anytime, it’d be okay. I won’t stay long – maybe only a few hours, to get directions and maybe names of good hotels, or, if I’m lucky, a place to crash at his house. I don’t have very good maps of Georgia – the ones I stole from Yaten the last time I went to Boston are about twenty years out of date, and I haven’t seen a gas station since I hit the highway in South Carolina at noon, and they didn’t have anything decent. Just snacks and cigarettes and gas and drinks, and maybe some porn on the back shelves for kids and the occasional guy who’s actually legally allowed to buy it. I didn’t. I’m still trying to figure out what went on six months ago, right after Alistair showed up, not long after Wynter found out about… It’s not important. But I got psychically kissed by a guy, and what’s weirding me out is how I didn’t really think about it till afterwards.

Yeah. A guy. Would you believe I didn’t even know what ‘gay’ was until seventh grade? One of the boys in my history class got found out, and got discriminated against until high school, where the GSA gave him his self-esteem back and he wouldn’t stand for it any more.

I didn’t really think about it at the time, except in a sort of detached way – I realized that this guy wasn’t really liked by the rest of the school populace, but I was so busy doing my homework and martial arts training that I didn’t really pay attention. I think that’s coming back to bite me now, in the style of ‘turnabout-is-fair’. Irony: 1; James: 0.

So anyway, here I am. I catch sight of an exit that looks like it leads to a small town with actual inhabitants that’s halfway to civilization – in other words, it not only has a Mickey D’s; it has a Walgreen’s, a Gap, and a Wal-Mart, too. Gasp.

Maps, maps, maps…ah! Here we go!

Four dollars and twenty minutes later, I’m looking at a phone directory and wishing I’d had the foresight to remember the name of Keveign’s dad. There’s twelve Donnellys on the list, and none of them is named Keveign-with-a-g. There’s Catherine Donnelly, Erik Donnelly, Katya Donnelly-Evanova, Liam Donnelly, Lisa Donnelly, her husband Marcus, Pete Donnelly… it just keeps going, on and on. Fortunately, there’s only four men – and one of ‘em’s married. Good odds that one’s not Keveign.

All right, time to get Erik Donnelly and see if Keveign’s not been giving out his middle name.

The phone rings three times, and the answering machine’s about to pick up, when–

"Hello?"

"Hi, I’m looking for Keveign Donnelly-"

"There’s no one here by that name." And the phone slams down, making me wince.

"Nice fellow," I mutter under my breath.

Okay, now for Liam.

It rings twice, and is picked up by some man who sounds nothing like Keveign.

"Stephen Weiss."

Oh, great. Just great. I check the date on the phone book; it’s from this year. So he can’t have moved away – great. Just what I need right now.

"Hi, I’m looking for Keveign Donnelly."

There’s a curious silence from the other end of the line, and I’m worried, but glad that I didn’t get hung up on immediately. It’s a good sign.

"I’ll get him."

I didn’t expect it to actually be right.

"Yeah?" comes the voice on the line, familiar in a distant, almost-forgotten sort of way. "Who is this?"

"James Golden. From outside of Boston, you know, about a month ago."

"Yeah. I do know. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to thank you all for looking after me for those few days. It was really appreciated. What do you need?"

"Advice. What’s the best way to slip through Wolfblood’s net without getting caught or having to pay bribes? And it has to be fast. And- do you know any way to catch a Hunter in its influence?"

Long silence.

"I can’t tell you that – but I can give you a place to stay for a few days, and give you a way to screw up anyone going after you."

"How?" It sounds too good to be true, like insurance or warranties on cars.

"Where are you?" He doesn’t answer the question, but I don’t mind too much, so long as it won’t involve murder – and Keveign doesn’t strike me as being that kind of person.

I tell him the intersection, and he gives me directions to where he lives. When he’s done, he makes me repeat them back to him, just to make sure I remember, and starts to hang up.

"Wait," I say urgently, remembering something. "In the phone book, you’re listed as ‘Liam Donnelly’. Is Keveign just your middle name?"

"Yes." And he hangs up for real this time, leaving me with the chill, recorded voice of the operator system talking in my ear like an empty-headed cheerleader or the emptiness of the binary non-intelligence that makes up a computer.

"Look," I say, impatient, "this guy – James Golden – is coming to stay for a couple days because he’s running from someone who wants to kill him. There is nothing erotic going on – I’m not you, Stef!"

"I never insinuated that you were." He gives me a teasing half-smile over his book, waiting for me to say something.

"You’re thinking something Freudian, aren’t you?"

"Of course. Everything is Freudian if you work at it hard enough."

He sounds like David, I think, but I don’t say it – it’s not close enough to the moon to be able to say something like that without having to deal with repercussions.

"Anyway, is that okay? We can just give him the guest room and leave it at that. You’d- nevermind."

"Never know he was there?" and Stef just smiles at me. Sometimes I forget that he’s got sharper senses than I do; that he loses less in the conversion from wolf-to-man. If I hadn’t known him for as long as I have, I might be inclined to dislike him for it, but as it is…well, he’s my dad, at least by adoption. We have a sort-of pact not to mention our differences, and how when I’m old and dying, he won’t have changed. In twenty, thirty years, we’ll have to start pretending that I raised him, not the other way ‘round. He already looks the same age as me.

"Anyway – just try to act normal and be nice, all right? He’s a sort of lycanthrope, I guess, and an ex-Hunter."

"Normal? Which definition?" He almost doesn’t sound defensive, but can’t quite pull it off. There are lots of ways to say ‘normal’ around Stef. Not a werewolf, not almost-immortal, not gay…

"Not crazy."

He would relax, I think, but he almost-was before. "That I can do with some degree of success."

Ouch. Thanks for guilt-tripping me, Dad. I feel really good now.

"I wouldn’t ask anything unreasonable, would I?" I pretend a cheerfulness I don’t feel, and I know I’m asking to get insulted, but I can help it. Guilt must bring out a self-destructive urge in me.

"As I remember, you wanted to have a slumber party in sixth grade, and said to me, quote, ‘Dad, if David stays with us Friday night, I’m going to go in a corner and die of shame before my friends even get here – and we’re going to all be in the basement.’"

As I remember, it was a little more emphatic than that, although the thought is appreciated. More along the lines of, ‘Dad, if David puts a foot in this house tomorrow night, I’m going to run away from fear that when I get to school Monday morning, I’ll be killed.’ I had such weird priorities then. I know so much more now – and I don’t think it would be because Stef’s gay that they’d have tried to kill him, then. Or, at least, not by the end, after they tried to and he just healed. And then when the new moon came ‘round, and they found they weren’t dealing with just Stef, after all, but a wolf, too.

Doesn’t matter. Nobody noticed, and David isn’t easily fazed; I think he understands kids pretty well.

"Young and stupid," I say, and smile at him. I think I still am.

"Of course." And he gives me a sort of half-smile back, and adds, "It’s fine by me," before going back to his book.

Well, that’s one proto-parent down. At least I don’t need David’s approval.

Bloody-damning-hell. It’s hot. Remind me why I decided to take a vacation in Georgia in July… I must’ve been whacked too hard in the head.

"Ukyo, give me the damn fan."

"Fine." He slaps it into my outstretched hand, and I wave it around for a few seconds before handing it back to him.

"It’s useless. The thing’s perforated!"

"It’s Oriental."

"It’s utterly nonfunctioning."

He shrugs. "Nothing functions in this kind of heat except the air conditioner."

"You got that right. And what’s with the iced tea? No coffee? Do these people not have minds?"

"Keep your voice down. You sound like a tourist from Chicago."

"I am a tourist from Chicago."

"Right. Forgot." He grins at me, but I’m not smiling. I’m here to get my sister-in-law back, not sightsee. But I don’t know how to go about it. It’s not like you can go into a convenient occult shop – not that I’ve seen any – and say, ‘Hey, I’m looking for a werewolf pack that can help me find my brother’s wife, who’s been missing for two months, and I’ve finally managed to track her to here.’

Yeah. That’s why I’ve got Ukyo with me. He’s the Chicago suburbs’ pet psychic – you know, the real kind, not the cup-and-balls sort of tricks. Like, I’ll cast a Tarot reading for your sister-in-law, but you might not like the answer, because it’s right.

Well, not Tarot. He’s got his own deck, of something else. He says the Tarot doesn’t work right for werewolves and vampires, because of the ‘innate thaumomagnetic fields surrounding any paranormal being,’ whatever he means by that. So apparently he designed his own deck to compensate for it. Unfortunately, we want something more exact than what a set of cards can give us. Which is why he got dragged along with me to Athens’s suburbs in high summer.

"The problem," he says, reading my mind without intending to, "is that we only have a few days to find her and get her out of wherever-she-is. We can’t wait for the moon in a week."

"Yeah," I sigh. "Damn. D’ye think you can just – read minds, enough to find someone who can tell us?"

He shakes his head. "It’s unethical, Aura." He looks around the street. "I know you’ve got a nose for it – you tell me if you sense anything."

Okay, Aurora. Breathe deeply. Think a moment. Let it out, take another. Repeat until certain.

I nod my head in the direction the scent came from. "Over there. The woman with the black cargos and the black sleeveless. She’s not a were, but she smells of them."

"If you’re sure," he says, somewhat suspiciously, and we head over to the woman, who is currently peering in the window of a small bookshop, at their main display.

"Excuse me," Ukyo says to her, and she turns to look at us. "Um…"

"What he wants to ask," I say, pointing my thumb in his direction as I step forward, "is if you know where we could find the local puppies." Puppies – general, all-purpose word to indicate weres, without actually saying it.

She laughs. "You asked the wrong woman, kids. I’m the one who kills ‘em."

Oh, damnshithell. I can practically see Ukyo’s eyebrows hide behind his bangs.

"Oh," he says, sounding somewhat surprised, and she just looks at us with this expression on her face like she can’t believe our stupidity.

"Let me tell you this," she says, still smiling like she’s laughing at us. "There’s a couple of people you want to avoid in this city, before you get yourselves killed. One of them is me. The other is a man named Pednowski. That’s his surname. Anyone who’s working for him is also someone you want to avoid.

"There’s a few people who will help you. One of them is a lady named Lilith Barker. She’s a doctor married to a mortal were, and she helps to run a hospital for the preternatural, and a pediatric ward for same. Her main benefactor is a puppy named Stephen Weiss, ‘ph’ like the way it was originally in German. They’re both people who will help you. Someone who would like to help you but might not be able to is a vampire by the name of David Michaels. Too nice for his own good. And half the staff at the local university are either themselves a supernatural being or are closely related to someone who is. They’re all in on it." She shakes her head, slowly, as though she can’t believe that she’s telling us this. "Don’t waste it, kids. Someone out there would regret it if I had to shoot you both full of silver."

And she does this funny little half-wave at us both, and walks away.

"Who the hell was she?"

"I have no idea," answers Ukyo, as surprised as I am.

"Can we trust her?"

"Probably. It didn’t feel like she was lying, but you never know."

"What creeps me out is that she helped us at all."

"Yeah. I find it vaguely disturbing – she gains little from it, and she did it, even though she’d probably as soon kill Elena as give her advice," Ukyo states.

"Don’t say that. If you don’t say it, it won’t happen."

"Aura…" Ukyo’s voice trails off as he looks at me. "Denying the possibility can’t interfere in the actions of others. Get off the Egyptian river and come back here."

I shrug. "Don’t wanna."

He gives up with a slight shake of his head. "C’mon. There’s a little shopping complex here; they’ll have pay phones. We can try Directory Assistance. What were the names she mentioned, again?"

"Lilith Barker and – and –" I stop, unable to come up with the other names she supplied. "I can’t remember," I finish, shamefaced.

"It’s all right. We’ll do what we can with what we have."

I’m not sure what to think of these children. They’re about sixteen, and they’re on their own, and they really shouldn’t be. They called my office last night and asked my secretary if they could ask to speak to me, and when they found out they couldn’t, they came here at six-fifty in the morning – forty minutes before my office opens, and ten minutes before I got there – and camped out on the front stoop to wait for me. Along with David, who apparently came there of his own volition, though for what purposes, I don’t know.

I figure I might as well see them, since I’ve got time now. David doesn’t look like it’s urgent.

"Come in," I say, and sit down in a chair in front of my desk. They sit, too, on the two chairs in front of me. "What did you want to talk to me about? And what are your names?"

"I’m Aurora Adams, and this is Ukyo Hameshima. We’re from Chicago, and we’d appreciate your help."

The boy picks up the narrative. "Two months ago, Aurora’s sister-in-law was kidnapped. We’ve traced her here, and we want assistance getting her back."

"What makes you think I can help you?" This reeks of someone meddling.

"We met a woman, on the street. She gave us some names of people we want to avoid, and people we should try to find. We don’t know why she did it." That’s the boy.

"What did she look like?" I wonder who it was – there are lots of kind women on the streets who might lend them a hand. But among them, who would refuse to actually assist them?

"Um, about thirty, maybe thirty-five, sort of on the average side of height, light brown hair." The girl shrugs. "She reeked of werewolf."

"And she said that she was someone to avoid," the boy adds, which is a great way to tell me exactly who she is.

"Yes. You should avoid her." I wasn’t aware Ilyanna was back in town. Presumably she’s got some sort of score to settle; it’s not often she comes back to the town she betrayed. Maybe some sort of misplaced guilt in that unhinged mind of hers.
"Who is she?" That’s the boy again, giving me an intense look, like he’s trying to peer past my physical form into my soul.

I take a breath, let it out. They’re from Chicago; they won’t have heard of her. She stays east of the Appalachians now, though she was born in northwestern Kentucky. "She’s a werewolf hunter by the name of Ilyanna Hart. Her specialty is the killing of werewolves for bounty, and it’s all she does. Occasionally she’ll nail public hazards in the interest of safety, but that’s pretty rare. She’s notorious among the werewolf community, and this is the town where she went to college about twenty years ago."

They look at each other in surprise, and I don’t blame them. Ilyanna doing what she did… something in this city must bring out something sane and humane in her. She would not do that anywhere else; is infamous for being someone who would not do that anywhere else. I daresay they were lucky.

"Who do you need to find, and where do you think she is?"

"Her name’s Elena Shenoy, and we’re not sure where she is – when she was originally kidnapped, she was in LycanFang for a couple of weeks, but they didn’t put her in any fights, and they’ve been moving her around the country since she was taken: from LycanFang to Le Sang Du Loup in rural Quebec, out to the one that the Lis in Oregon are trying to shut down, and then over in this region. We think she’s ended up in this area, but you know that the arenas don’t exactly publicize themselves…" the boy answers.

"There is only one major arena with fights to the death in the South. That’s Wolfblood. It’s on the outskirts of town." I wish I had the power to put Pednowski behind bars, but we can’t haul the feds in, not if we want to keep ourselves secret. So many people have had their lives ruined by his ‘business’. Blood money, they call it now, though it’s green like any other kind, and can buy just as much. Even people with morals will take his money, because of that.

"I thought we’d come to the right place." The girl sounds pretty smug, and I don’t blame her – but she shouldn’t be celebrating prematurely.

"It’s not going to be a stroll in the park to get her out," I say. "Pednowski puts money into his fighters, and he’s not going to just let their relatives take them out." We should know, if we couldn’t get Keveign out after four years and he had to do it himself. "I would help you, but I can’t."

"Who can?"

Isn’t that a hard question. I would say ‘David,’ but he and Pednowski are still cordially ignoring each others’ existence, and then I would say ‘Stef’ because he’s not bound by those particular rules of conduct, except that he took the Hippocratic Oath years ago and refuses to violate it, either in a professional or personal situation.

"I’m not certain," I say, very softly, "but there is someone who can try. Keveign Donnelly." I pull out a piece of paper, and write Stef’s address on it, with his phone number. Keveign’s staying there; that I know, and David probably is, too, at the moment. Which reminds me that he’s sitting on one of the chairs outside in the hall.

Handing the piece of paper to them, I stand, and let them out , staring at David, who looks wan under the flourescent lighting.

"What is it, David?"

He shrugs. "Waiting for Stef." I give him a questioning look as I wander to the front desk and look through the filing system for today’s scheduled patients. Abrams, Alan, Byron, Cassin…

"Threw me out last night. Again."

"What was it this time?"

He shrugs. "I’m not going to peer into his motives for anything anymore."

"It’s six days till the new moon. This is not normal. By now he’s usually falling all over you."

"That’s not very nice." He looks amused, which is good. If he were really worried, I wouldn’t be able to get away with saying something like that without having to worry whose veins my blood was going to be in.

"No, but it’s true. Get him to his family or something, David. I don’t know what’s going on, and the actual amount of written information on people like him is…" I spread my hands helplessly, trying not to drop the file folders.

"He hasn’t got a family, Lilith, outside of Keveign. His parents are dead, and we’re not even certain if his sister is alive any longer – he hasn’t talked to her since nineteen-fifty-four."

I wonder if that’s when they stopped making it a secret to Stef’s family that the youngest child wasn’t going to be courting girls anymore.

"Then go to Chicago and find some, David. I don’t know whether his behavior is normal or not for what he is, and I can’t very well look around without him finding out. It’s not worth losing his trust for. The only people who would know are people with a long history of-"

And that is the sound of a door opening. I cut my words off as soon as I hear it.

"Lilith, do you think you can pull Aidan Kingsford’s file for me while you’re over there? It’s been two days since the last quarter moon, and I want to see if anything’s reopened or the scars have reappeared, like they did last month. His mother didn’t call, but you know he sometimes doesn’t tell her everything."

"Sure," I say, and run my finger along the shelves, looking for the K’s. Poor Aidan; everyone on staff knows him. He’s an adorable five-year-old who was abused by an older cousin – who also turned him into a werewolf. He tends to exhibit psychosomatic symptoms after his moon that reflect the damage done to him when his cousin started shifting in the middle of one beating session – things like claw marks along his back and chest. He’s getting therapy, but Stef’s the only one whom he lets examine him.

"Thanks. And-" he cuts off, looking up, and there’s a half-breath pause before he begins again, and I’m not watching, but I can guess why it’s there. "David." No malice there.

"Hi. How are you feeling?"

"Sleepy."

I glance up, and catch sight of Stef holding up a large thermos of tea, and wearing a smile.

"Apologetic," he adds, after a moment.

"Sorry to interrupt, but I’ll leave this on your desk," I tell him, brandishing the file Stef asked for, making my way past David. "Just don’t do anything that will traumatize any little kiddies that may come in early, otherwise you’ll be the one doing pro bono therapy, not I."

I am twenty-seven. I have to remember this. Riiiiiight…twenty-seven, not seven. I’m not supposed to feel some sort of residual panic every time I hear Stef and David fighting. It’s probably some sort of unresolved childhood trauma, or at least, that’s what Lilith would say, but I think she’s wrong; they didn’t fight like that when I was seven-and-a-half, and they never got me involved even after they started when I was fifteen.

But I still feel like I ought to be hiding in a dark corner somewhere when they do. This is why I didn’t want to go back home – Stef’s nice, a great parent, and David’s fantastically accepting of teenager-ness, but hearing them fight is like watching a house burn down, all horrible and you wish it hadn’t happened, even though you’re not directly involved. No verbal holds barred, either; I’ve learned far more than I ever wanted to about what goes on behind the door to Stef’s bedroom from what they yell at each other when they think I’m not listening.

Mm, breakfast. Food is good. Food is real good. Keeps you aliiiiiive. Complete with faked overstress on important words to make it melodramatic, or a complete breakfast; not entirely sure which.

I get strange when I’m sleepy.

The phone rings.

"Mmph?" I say, and swallow the bit of bagel I was chewing. "Hello?"

"Hi. Is this Kevayggen Donnelly?"

"Keveign. Yeah. Pronounced sort of like Kevin."

"Sorry. Um. This is Aurora Adams and Lilith Barker gave me your number and told me to talk to you about my sister-in-law who we think is at Wolfblood." Wow. Try saying that all in one breath at a hundred and ten miles an hour.

And then my ear suddenly connects to my left brain. "You’re trying to get someone out of Wolfblood?"

"Yes."

"Are you out of your mind?"

"I don’t think so."

"Are you suicidal?"

"Not that I know of."

"Are you a halfbreed Hunter or something? You’ve got to be unhinged to even think about trying."

She sighs, over the phone. "I’m a werewolf, okay? My friend’s a mind-reader. I’m on a pay phone, and I’m out of quarters until I eat dinner. And I really, really need help, or at least advice."

Stupid, stupid, stupid. But brave. And she doesn’t have to be diplomatic.

"Fine. The best advice is to distract the guards, shoot the cameras after disabling the power to the entire place, and steal the keys from the Warden to open the cages. Unfortunately, you can’t do that. The best you can do is distract the guards, put a cloth over the cameras, and pick the cage locks – or you can wait a few years to see whether she’ll get out on her own, or die there."

"Watch me try." She hangs up. Not smart. I didn’t tell her about the fact that all the doors are locked, too. And how not even her friend will be able to stop a bullet – not silver or iron or steel. They’re dead meat, and I’m sorry for it. Sorry that she didn’t wait long enough for me to finish. That her life is forfeit. But I don’t know who or where she is, and I can’t help her because of it.

So this is Wolfblood. I stare up at the façade, and up some more, to where the red brick turns into a blurred line against blue sky, and I squint from the bright light. The doors are wood, with leaded glass panes in them, and a geometric design reminiscent of a tree on it.

"What’s the Latin above the door mean?" I ask, glancing at Ukyo beside me as he stares at the words. It reads, ‘Si omni bestiae viri sunt, sunt omni viri bestiae?’ and he says slowly, "If all beasts are men, are all men beasts?"

I can’t help but think it’s an ugly joke. Only someone with a really sick sense of humor would use that as a motto.

We pull open the door, and it doesn’t squeak. I don’t know what I was thinking, imagining that it would creak like an unoiled hinge in horror movies, when the hapless victims enter Dracula’s domain. If it were Dracula, I wouldn’t be so scared.

"Let’s go," I say, after a deep breath, and grin recklessly at Ukyo. "Give ‘em Hell."

He looks back, sadly, and says, "Half of the people in there are vampires, Aurora. I can’t."

"Then do your best." And we walk through the doorway into a hall with a pretty tiled floor with Celtic knots along the edges near the wall and mandalas every forty paces or so. It looks like someone couldn’t make up their minds what cultures they wanted to include, so they did all of them. Symbolic, perhaps, and anywhere else, I’d have expected it to be ugly, but it’s managed to be tasteful. This is so incongruous.

But I can smell the blood, now; faint where I’m standing, but as we walk down the hall, it gets stronger. At the very end, bound with rusted iron straps, are the wooden double doors, and they smell of blood like nothing else. I touch them on the metal handle, and it burns, but I don’t scream, no matter how much I want to.

I look at my hand, and it’s covered with swollen, red blisters. I touch one, as gently as I can, and it bursts, pus and blood dripping down my palm towards my wrist, and I make a small whimpering noise. I can’t help it.

"That," I say, trying to keep my voice as even as I can, "is silver. They painted it to mask it, but that is silver."

Ukyo holds one hand out, and I put my injured one on it. "This might hurt a bit," he tells me, before closing his eyes, and there’s a tickling, cracking sensation. As I watch, the welts go down, and the injured skin flakes off, leaving only unharmed flesh behind. That would have taken days to heal, normally, even with my lycanthropy helping, and it would have scarred.

"Didn’t hurt," I tell him, as he opens the door and we both walk through.

"Good, then," he answers, and we keep going for a moment, before he says, "Aura? To do that, I had to drain it off someone. I don’t think it was anyone who would be in a position to come looking for us, but just in case, I want you to know." He watches me shrug.

"Thanks. I’m not going to worry about it yet, though." We keep walking. It’s another hallway, this time with several doors leading off of it, with what looks like seat numbers above them. The door on the end-left-side of the hall says ‘PRIVATE,’ so we push on it and go through.

It leads to a dark hallway, with a concrete floor and flourescent lights in the ceiling. It’s wide enough for two cars to pass next to each other and still have a little maneuvering room. The floor slopes downwards at a sharp angle, and I think it’s intentional that it doesn’t have steps.

"All the way down at the end," Ukyo whispers carefully, so we walk, trying to stay as quiet as we can. This is off-limits territory, and I’m not sure what to expect.

There’s a guard at the end of the hall, carrying a holstered gun, and probably a couple of extra in places we can’t see. He doesn’t look like muscle, but he smiles in that way that reminds you that chimps smile to make threats.

"Hello, Miss Adams, Mister Hameshima." He says Ukyo’s name with a halfway good Japanese accent, even. "Please turn around and leave." I don’t wonder how he knows our names. They’ve probably got computers in their offices linked up to the federal government’s servers, so they can run searches on our faces.

"No, thank you," says Ukyo, all politeness and courtesy. "We’d like to meet with whomever’s running Wolfblood, thank you."

"I’d be one of them. What do you want?"

"We’d like to get Aura’s sister-in-law out."

The man laughs, and I can see the hint of fangs. "Do you really believe I’ll let you?"

"No," I say, "but it makes it more fun, because when you’re begging to know what we want, I get to slap you for idiocy."

"Such egos," he teases, and it has an edge to it, like a razorblade against the throat. "You are not afraid of guns, nor vampires?"

"I’m a Weiss," I say, and he gives me a Look that says, ‘So what?’ "And you’ve never had to wrangle with the weres in Chicago." I laugh at the look on his face, like he’s imagining naked mud wrestling, and that’s when Ukyo strikes.

We hide the vampire’s guns, break his legs – not that it’ll make any difference in half an hour – and go through the door.

There are two people waiting for us in the office. One of them is another vampire, and the other is human. The vampire has a very nasty-looking sniper rifle pointed at us as we come in the door, and she’s not as stupid as her compatriot.

I wish she were.

She shoots, and steel chips fly off the door. I blink, and it takes effort to keep myself from jumping, or trying to shield myself from the blast. It hurts.

"The next one is going to hit pretty-boy over there in the face," she says. "Don’t move."

"You’d shoot children?" I ask. "Just children?"

"You broke Evan’s legs. You’re not children. And, unlike him, I’ve been to Chicago. They didn’t get rid of Al Capone’s gang – the weres just replaced him after the feds got him for tax evasion."

"Oh, it’s not that bad anymore," I say, and laugh. "Not anymore."

She blinks, and so does Ukyo. She nods at him. "I see. You came with backup, Miss Adams."

"Of course," Ukyo answers, but nothing except his mouth and chest move. He knows better than to ask for death by silver bullet in his brain. If we play this right, we might even get out alive.

The man behind the desk stands. "Put down the gun, Michelle."

Surprisingly enough, she does. "Allan. This is not wise."

"Of course it is not." He opens a drawer and pulls out a shining keychain. "Here." He tosses it to us, and Ukyo catches it. I know better than to try; I have no doubt that they’re made from silver. "You have half an hour to find your sister-in-law. If you have not found her and left the building by then – and all the doors will be locked, with locks that are not on this keychain – then Evan and Michelle have free reign to hunt you down and kill you on sight."

"That’s not very fair," I say. "Howabout forty-five minutes? I can’t pick locks that fast."

"Thirty, or Michelle gets to pick up her gun again, and she’s trigger-happy."

"Just do it, Aura." That’s Ukyo. I don’t know how he can sound so sure of himself. "It’s a deal."

The man behind the desk nods, and the lady vampire sits in a convenient chair and pulls out an abused paperback fantasy novel.

We go out the door, Ukyo holding it for me, to avoid the silver. We kick the vampire lying on the floor as we go out, and I jump on his chest a couple of times, for good measure. I want him to stay immoble as long as possible. I don’t trust the man behind the desk, but I trust the vampires even less.

I look at my watch. "Ten forty-three. We need to be out of here by ten after."

The first door, on our right, Ukyo unlocks, and the room is full of the sounds of breathing and quiet crying. The smell of blood and disease makes me nauseous, but I look around anyway, and none of them are my sister-in-law. I still want to set them free, but I don’t think they would notice, even if the doors were wide open before them, they’re so lost to the world.

It’s so very sad.

"Let’s go," I say to Ukyo, and pull him further along the corridor.

We open door after door, until ten of our precious minutes are used up and we are starting to get worried – before we come upon the largest room yet. It’s walk-in, instead of just being a little closet-like thing. The walls have cages spaced ever four or five feet, and all of them- all thirty or forty of them – look nervous and sick at the sight of us.

"New arrivals," I tell Ukyo as I step in, looking at each of them in turn. There are numbers, chalked above their cages; the numbers mean nothing to me, but presumably, they have some meaning or another. Probably saying when they’re going to be fighting, or a registration number, to identify them.

Elena’s in here; I can smell her on the air. She’s scared, and she wants out, now, but has no hope of getting it.

I keep walking, trying to smell where she is, and how close, but I find the place where her scent is strongest, and she is gone.

I blink, stretching carefully to avoid putting too much strain on the limbs those damned kids broke, as Michelle watches them from the cameras.

"Who are they looking for?"

"The girl’s sister-in-law. Name of Elena Shenoy. Y’know, the Indian one with the Godiva hair."

"You mean the one who wanted to bite me?"

"One and the same, Evan."

"They can have her, if she’s gonna be that much trouble!"

"Eh, Miz Hart is going to take care of her in a few days anyhow. They might as well see how far they can run. It’s like trying to escape a steamroller by running in a straight line on an interstate."

"Donnelly managed to," I point out, and Michelle smiles secretly.

"Sometimes you have to use blackmail to get the person you want."

"Is this going to end up a hostage situation? Because if you’re going to get Stephen Weiss in a roomful of silver and try to use him for an edge in negotiations, I want out."

She laughs. "Give me some credit, Evan. Even I know he’s not allergic to silver."

She hasn’t answered me, not really, but I don’t say anything.

"So, where did you two put her?" asks Allan. "These kids look industrious."

"She’s in the arena itself," says Michelle smugly. "The last place they would look, or be able to get to."

"Clever," I admit grudgingly. "Very clever. I have a feeling this is going to end badly for them."

"We don’t want the boy," Morgan answers carefully. "He’s – you know. The psychic sort. We really don’t want him in here. But the girl, maybe."

"So don’t shoot her. She’s got silver-allergies; did you notice?" I ask, hovering behind Michelle, my hand on her shoulder, as we watch the security cameras as the two teenagers get more frantic as they search through more and more rooms and find nothing. There’s only one left before they have to check the arena itself.

"I did, yes. I think she realized that she would need someone who was immune to silver and brought him along because she knew he would be useful," answers Allan. "They only have ten minutes left. Do you want to go bother them, Michelle?"

"Nah," she answers. "Give ‘em another five. I want to at least give them a chance; never say I wasn’t sporting."

So we watch the clock, and Michelle checks the settings on her gun.

We finish checking the rooms, and I feel like – well breaking something. Certainly not crying; never crying.

"Let’s check the arena, Aura," whispers Ukyo, and pulls me to the door that he opens and we go through.

The place feels like a sports stadium; wide open, with a field at the bottom, and hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of seats, lined up carefully for the minimum amount of leg room possible while still letting people through and the maximum amount of money. The gravel at the bottom of the arena is grey, however, and looks nothing like a sports field. A bloody, gruesome one, perhaps, but not at all related to the soccer my brother watches when it’s showing at one in the morning, or the curling my mother would watch if they showed it on American television. Football or hockey, perhaps, but with more fatalities, and the only ball in play is a body.

Ukyo hauls me by my hand down to the center, and we look over the railing, seeing someone spilled on the stones beneath us. I leap over it, and run over to the woman there before realizing that it is Elena; that she’s alive – she’s breathing – and unconscious, but so far not mortally wounded.

I shake her, gently, trying to wake her up, but not wanting to be injured. There isn’t enough time. "Elena," I say, "It’s Aurora."

She makes a small protesting noise and blinks her eyes opening wide as she sees me. "What are you doing here?"

Something goes click behind me.

"Please don’t move. I wouldn’t like to have to shoot you, and these things make a hell of a mess upon exit."

"Ukyo," I say, "why didn’t he warn me?"

"Oh, the boy? We knocked him out. Don’t want psychics loose on the grounds, getting in the minds of our pets."

I put my hands up, slowly, my body between Elena and the woman behind me. "You broke your word."

"What else do you expect?" she counters contemptuously. "I’m a vampire. I work at an arena. You should have counted on me cheating. Who plays fair any more?"

It’s a rhetorical question.

"May I turn around?" I ask. "I’d like to be able to see the person who’s got their gun aimed at my skull."

"No, thank you. I prefer to have your hands in the air and your back to me."

There is no need to respond.

"Madam Shenoy, please sit up and put your hands in the air as well," states the man, as he walks up.

She does. What other choice is there? Heroics are for heroes in movies, not regular people in real life. Heroes are lucky bastards and can do things like dodge bullets. Real heroes shouldn’t need to, because dodging bullets is the kind of thing you can’t do.

He snaps a pair of steel – thank God! – around Elena’s wrists, and moves to put them on mine.

I entertain the thought of kicking him, but I look through my peripheral vision, and he is not in the way between the gun and my heart. Why can’t villains in real life ever be stupid enough to give the good guys openings to escape?

’Scuse me, but I’m kind of in a desperate situation here, someone says, and I instinctively look around, trying to see where the speaker is, before I realize I’m nowhere near him. If possible, anyone who can hear me, please, could I – er, borrow – some energy, real fast? I can’t put it back, but I need it.

It sounds like a child.

I need it now, otherwise my friend’s gonna die.

Name/species/alliance/intention? If he’s serious, time’s too short for fully articulated thought.

Self-Ukyo-Hameshima-name-on-paper/human-human-werewolf-friends/self-power-knowledge/aid-life-vest-lady-gun

Pain-sympathy And I’m glad that nobody’s following me, because I pull over the car and everything hurts. Energy has to come from somewhere. It’s not like I can siphon it off someone’s lawn as I pass by; that’s more suspicious than a teenager collapsed in a car by the side of the road, with no accident. Formerly verdant grass that withers and dies as you watch? That’s enough to make anyone turn around and look twice.

Thankyouthankyou says Ukyo Hameshima, and he’s gone, but not before he gives me his thoughts.

He calls them geothaumatic lines – streaks of magic, like veins, that run through the earth. A lot of them, apparently, are parallel to old roads, and cross at holy places.

I don’t know why he thinks this, why he gave it to me, unless he believes I can use it. Yeah, right. If they really existed, the Hunters’d know about them. I’ve never heard of them, and Aeryn certainly never mentioned it. She may not have known everything, but she knew enough to get by, and more than enough to survive. Enough to help other people survive, at any rate.

I stop, and take a breath or two or three, and start the car up again before getting back on the highway. It’s not so bad, now, the lack of energy. And if it can save someone from death… it’s certainly worth it. I’ll just go to bed earlier tonight.

Aurora please don’t move I’m sorry I’m so sorry but I have to-

The lady with the gun frowns, and her arms tense before she falls, clutching the gun like a lifeline out of the sea. The man with the handcuffs – I am still free – just collapses like a five-foot-ten limp noodle, and lies there, unmoving.

"Ukyo!" I shout, and I can see his head at the top of the seats.

"Aurora, I can’t move; if I move I’ll lose control and they’ll just shoot you. Get your sister-in-law out and just leave, okay? I’ll be able to follow you after I let go of them – but go!"

"Sure," I shout back, and grab the keys from the unconscious man’s pocket. Steel. I wonder why. They unlock Elena’s handcuffs easily, and I’m surprised that they weren’t fake ones. Something smells fishy.

"C’mon, let’s go," I tell her, and we stand, leaning on each other, and begin to head towards the doors, Ukyo far behind us.

The door is locked. None of the keys on the keychain that I stole work. Time is running short, and the door is thick steel. A nearby staircase spirals up several flights before it ends at another door, and that is open – opens onto the main hall. We are nearly all the way up it when Ukyo screams, from the other side of the arena, "Go!"

Two shots ring out. One sounds like it ricocheted off a painted-like-stone concrete wall. The other makes no noise at all when it hits, and that’s the one I’m worried about.

There isn’t time to see what’s wrong. I turn, and dash into the hall, pulling Elena behind me, and we are at the doors and out of them and into the street and at the car long before the vampires would have time to chase us.

We sit in the car, with the windows rolled up and the doors locked, for several minutes, and then we are gone, back to the hotel where Ukyo and I are staying. I don’t know where he is, or if he’s alive or dead. I think he’s dead. Bullets don’t make a noise when they sink into flesh, at least not a loud one. Not loud enough to hear it from across the arena.

I still have the keys. We can go back in, later. Whenever that is. I don’t think it’s going to be anytime soon.

And all I can think about that night, when I’m trying to go to sleep, is what I’m going to tell his parents.

"You’re a very lucky woman," I say to her. "Very lucky indeed."

"I know," she answers, her hair half-covering her dark face. "I could have died in there. I don’t know how Aurora and her friend did it, but they did."

I only shake my head and peel the latex gloves off my hands. "You can put your shirt on now," I tell her. "You’re all fixed up." The white bandage disappears under her black tee.

"Thank you," she says. "Especially on such short notice, and when I cannot pay you at the moment."

I laugh, out of genuine amusement. "This isn’t a hospital, Miss Shenoy. And my boss would have had my hide for breakfast if he’d heard that I’d turned a woman straight out of Wolfblood away. We do anything we can that’s still legal to undermine it."

"I am still grateful."

I know she is. I think she understands what happened to her. I am not certain she has the entire story – none of us do, except for the girl-woman sitting in the waiting room outside, her hands shaking and her eyes dry.

"Where are you going after this?"

"Home," she answers simply. "To Chicago. With my sister, even if it means we don’t know what happened to her friend. I want to get as far away from here as possible."

I can understand that, and I say so. She smiles at me, and leaves the room, stopping beside her sister-in-law, who is reading an outdated copy of Time from the magazine rack, before the two of them exit through the glass-paned door.

To Chicago, huh? They came a long way to leave someone behind.

A/N: Okay, kudos to people who’ve figured out that Stef is a giant reuse of a character whom I love, adore, and come very close to idolizing. This is for everyone out there who reads my stuff who has thought, ‘Hey, haven’t I met this guy before?’. You probably have.