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Chapter Ten

The big guy Fand had called "Setanta" had made himself at home. In my home.

He was draped across the sofa with his size 14 boots crossed over an armrest. The smoke detectors had either died from the overload or had their batteries pulled because his cigar had created a nimbostratus layer of blue haze throughout the gallery. The overhead lights were visibly dimmer and bluer.

He was busily engaged with a wireless Playstation 2 controller and coordinated acts of mayhem on the plasma, flat-panel monitor on the far wall. Oblivious to my newly awakened status, he was urging his on-screen Raiders from the "Land of Oak" and making oral supplications to the great deity Madden for victory.

"Setanta!"

Even though the voice was filtered by the reinforced-steel, load-bearing ceiling of the main cabin, Fand's bellow was like an ice pick thrust to the brain. Even Zotz' snoring faltered as The Mullet erupted from the couch.

"Is he still out of his head?" she yelled from somewhere above.

My chin was back on my chest and my eyes closed before he could turn and look. Still, I felt his eyes all over me as he clomped around the salon.

"Aye!" he bellowed back.

"Then get up here! We seem to have attracted some attention!"

There was the sound of the aft door opening and closing, then heavy footsteps on the spiral ladder to the third deck.

After a moment's silence I raised my head and turned to see Zotz wide awake and looking back at me.

"Welcome back," he said quietly.

"Hell of a homecoming," I answered, keeping my voice equally low.

He shrugged sheepishly. "They came prepared. Fey Folk . . . what're you gonna do?" he asked rhetorically.

"We'll get to that in a moment. I'll need some intel. Like how many there are?"

"Two for sure," he admitted reluctantly. "Maybe a couple of others, coming and going, that I haven't seen. But I did get a callback from your buddy Ancho before Blondie and her boy-toy arrived. I can give you a little background on them."

"Anything helpful?"

He leaned in. "Your vivani said you're messin' with royalty. One of the faerie queens, to be more specific. And while these girls all got reputations for playing the field, ole dandelion head, upstairs, has been down the road and around the bend a bit."

"Do tell." I glanced at the aft corridor. "And quickly."

"Seems she was once married to the Celtic sea god Manannan . . ."

"Was? Once? Widowed or divorced?"

"Divorced. With extreme prejudice from what I understand."

I nodded. "I certainly can."

"Anyway, after hubby dumped her she got herself in bit of a fix going up against some kind of warriors—'Fomorians,' Ancho called 'em—for control of the Irish Sea."

"Sounds like she likes to pick fights."

"That would be my guess. Only she bit off more than she could chew, it seems. She had to recruit this Irish hero, Koochy-koo or sumptin'—"

"Irish? Sounds like Cuchulainn," I said. "Sort of the Celtic version of Hercules with berserker tendencies."

"Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was serendipity, seeing as how they sound like such perfect soul mates," the demon mused. "By all accounts she would have been 'canned Fand' if she hadn't recruited him to her cause. Problem was, Cuch wouldn't get on board unless queenie would marry him."

"Lotta street cred," I mused, "even for the great Cuchulainn: mortal marrying an elf. And royalty at that."

"Not to mention she's a hell of a good lookin' dame."

"Looks only go so far," I fumed. "And the key word in your previous sentence: 'hell.' "

Zotz shrugged and the chains clinked a bit. "Well, she agreed to his terms and, surprise, according to reliable sources, she fell hard for the big lug."

"Yeah, I bet they all lived happily ever after."

Zotz grinned. "Yeah. Well, things didn't work out as Emer—this was Cuchulainn's wife—was the jealous type and even Manannan wasn't crazy about his ex's newfound happiness."

"That's just so typical."

"Actually, more practical than petty," Zotz elaborated. "There was some sort of prophecy. Apparently the union between Fand and Cuchulainn would have eventually destroyed the Faerie and brought about the end of the world. They didn't care though, they were just two crazy kids in love."

"Any minute now you're going to tell me why this is important."

"So the elves got together and held a council of war."

"One Tolkien over the line, sweet Jesus?"

He eyed me. "You feelin' all right?"

"A little light-headed," I admitted.

"Not surprising seeing as how you've had nothing to eat while you were—uh—gone."

Right. Step one: escape. Step two: grab blood from the fridge on the way out. Step three . . . 

"But in the end, it was her ex-husband, the sea god Manannan—"

I threw myself against the chains. "Is this in any way helpful to us, here and now?" I grunted. "I have got to get down to New Orleans! I don't have time for this!"

"Hey, you're the one who's always quoting the 'know thy enemy' stratagems. You want intel? I'm intellin' ya what I know."

I strained against the chains again. No acetylene torches popped out of my shoulders to help cut me loose. "Okay! Okay. I just can't be sitting here right now! Something really bad is going down right now and I really need to get back to New—" I shook my head. Mama Samm was in her element. I needed to think a little more clearly about my own circumstances. I took a deep breath. "Keep talking. Tell me everything Ancho said."

Zotz looked at me suspiciously. "Is the D'Arbonne woman all right?"

"Now who's changing the subject?"

He blinked first. "The sea god did some mumbo jumbo with drawing his magic cloak between Fand and this Cuchulainn while they slept together. The upshot? They never could meet again nor remember each other. Sweet, huh?"

"Yeah. Sweet. Think of all the plot lines you could tie up on Desperate Housewives. Did Ancho offer any practical advice?" I asked meaningfully.

"Oh yeah. He said, too bad you didn't meet up with her sister, instead. Seems she's a goddess of health and earthly pleasures. They used to call her the 'Pearl of Beauty.' This Liban is supposed to be a real sweetie."

"Um, yeah. That's. Real. Helpful." I sighed. "So what about this Setanta character? Do we know anything about him? He doesn't have the pointy ears so, unless he fell into a mechanical rice picker at an early age, I'm guessing he ain't one of the Fey Folk."

Zotz gave me another one of his "oh yeah" looks. "Sorry. Got sidetracked, I guess. I don't know if this is important or not but it sure got your vivani's panties in a wad. He said to tell you that Setanta is his real name. His birth name."

"And this is significant . . . why?"

"He said to tell you that Setanta is the Hound of Ulster."

It took another moment to sink in. Then: "Holy crap!" I said. "That means—"

But what it meant was lost in the next moment as the sliding glass door at the front of the salon opened and my heart stopped.

 

I died, of course.

Anytime your heart stops, it naturally follows that you die. Of that you can be sure.

What you can't be sure of is where you will go next—though I've known more than a few smug SOBs who thought they had it all figured out.

In this case, however, I went to Heaven.

No dinking around on the Ethereal Plane like the last time. Just the heavenly glow of golden sunset light pouring in through the opened doorway, framing the unearthly beauty of an angel coming to take me into Eternity.

The Bible says something poetic about being "gathered unto the bosom of Abraham" but there was nothing patriarchal about the bosom that stressed her orange wetsuit. The neoprene top was unzipped and gaped wide. Multiple strands of pearls, puka shells, and antique gold draped from her neck and provided a modicum of modesty. She glided toward me until she was close enough for me to count the copper flecks in her sea-green eyes. We both stared, studying each other like two completely alien species meeting for the first time. She leaned closer, her perfect lips the color of coral parted and—

"Liban!" bellowed Fand's voice from the aft passageway, "Get away from the prisoners!"

My angel gently turned to face my once and current warden. Which left me to figure out that I was still alive and still chained to a chair on my houseboat.

"He's too dangerous!" the platinum-blonde-haired fairy was saying. "So don't be fooling around with him!"

"Well, of course he's dangerous," the wetsuited dream answered softly, "but you're only making him more so."

"Hard to believe they're actually sisters," Zotz murmured to my left.

At first glance, maybe not. Both women would be considered great beauties, possessing that exotic, otherworldly appearance that marks the Fey Folk as a separate race from humankind. Tilted eyes, flawless skin over sculpted cheekbones and fired with an inner glow like a backlit rose petal. Liban shared familial traits with my captor but there were striking differences, as well.

Her hair was longer, a veritable waterfall tumbling past her shoulders in marked contrast to Fand's corona of white. And it was dark, giving the impression of a deep, chocolate brown on the first glance. A longer, more careful look revealed deep bands of forest green—like rich striates of moss thriving in brown loam. Or chocolate mint. The luminosity of her skin was less tincture of rose, like Fand, and more phosphorescent, like moonlight on the water. In contrast, her smile had more warmth than the sunrise. Bad enough she looked the way she did. Being a Sidhe and probably faerie royalty, she automatically gave off a mortal-befuddling glamour without conscious effort. I had to bite the inside of my mouth to stay focused. And if she was, as Ancho claimed, an actual goddess . . . 

"Maybe they were separated at birth," I whispered back.

"And Fand raised by wolves."

"Dire wolves," I agreed.

"Maybe she was adopted," the Bat-demon mused.

"They might be half sisters," I theorized. "Or foster sisters . . ." And suddenly noticed that we were the only ones talking.

Fand and Liban were looking at us.

We looked back.

After a moment Fand turned to her sister and said: "Do you see how he disrespects me? Not just one of the immortal Sidhe, but a queen!"

"Hey, sweetheart," I shot back, "I'm not breaking into your throne room, hogtieing your pet demon, threatening your kid, and tying you to a chair, so let's be a little more judicious about who's doing the disrespecting, here."

"Wait a minute," Zotz said. "Did you just refer to me as your 'pet' demon?"

"He's got a point, Sis," Liban was saying. "You really need to reevaluate what you're trying to accomplish, here."

"I mean," the demon continued, "I may have implied a master/pupil dynamic on rare occasion . . ."

"I know what I'm doing!" Fand snapped.

" . . . but to characterize our relationship in such derogatory and demeaning—"

"Like you knew what you were doing with Manannan?" Liban asked. "Or the Fomorians? Or how about the big himbo up topside?"

"For heaven's sakes," I said to Zotz, "I was making a point to Sidhe Who Must Be Obeyed. So chill. Or I'll swat you with a rolled-up newspaper."

"This is different," Fand argued. "He is immune to the power of the Sidhe. He can only be restrained physically. And then only with great difficulty."

Liban's attention swung back to me. "Really . . ." There was an all-too-familiar look in her eyes.

"Ohhh no!" Fand grabbed her sister by the arm and dragged her out of the salon and, presumably, topside.

Zotz and I were left to our own chair-bound recognizance.

"So," I said after a meaningful pause, "I'm guessing the reason you're still sitting there is they've either done something to you or to the chains so you can't escape."

"How would I know?" he sniffed. "I'm just a 'pet' demon."

"Great Solomon's barking seals, man! If I had a pet demon, I'd train him better than to be taken captive by a bunch of elves!"

"Not so much a bunch as one with an overgrown gofer."

"Not helping your case, here."

"You're a fine one to talk, Mound Man."

"That was different. I didn't see them coming. You had a complete description—"

"Not complete," he argued. "You neglected to tell us how hot the elf playing doctor was! No wonder it took you three weeks to escape—even with Special Forces training."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You were what? Navy SEAL? Army Ranger? Air Force Commando? Marine Force Recon? Green Beret?"

"Army National Guard," I snapped.

He stared at me. "Oh, right. They said your military records were sealed." He nodded knowingly. "Top secret. Black Ops. Keeping it on the QT."

I shook my head. "No. Really. I was Army National Guard. Not R.A. Not Special Forces. Up until I developed Swiss Army fingers my hands were not considered deadly weapons."

"But your sealed records. I heard—"

"You heard wrong. I was a communications expert. My platoon was out on training maneuvers. A Special Forces group was nearby and down a radio operator. I got loaned out." I closed my eyes and fought to not remember. "Things got seriously fucked up. Everyone who was involved got their records sealed. That's the closest you can put me to the word 'seal.' "

"Oh," he said, after a moment.

I ground my teeth. "The point is, I escaped. How about these chairs? If you're limited to human form and strength, and the chains are out of the question for either of us—then maybe the furniture is the weak point . . ."

Now he shook his head. "Tried that second. And third. And fifth. They did something to make the chairs equally unbreakable. How about popping out some fingertip hacksaws like you did before?"

I thought about it. The problem was my hands and fingers weren't in a position to do anything worthwhile if I could. Still, I tried.

In other words, I thought about my fingertips sprouting serrated, metal-cutting blades. Tried meditative visual imaging.

Nothing happened.

Big surprise: so far all of these weird manifestations had been unconscious responses to life-threatening situations. I had yet to exert any conscious control over any nanocybernetic manifestation. And this attempt would be a useless exercise anyway. Even if I could produce some kind of cyber hacksaw and position my hands where I could start sawing on chain links, it could take hours to cut through a single link. What I really needed was a key to the padlock . . . 

"You're bleeding."

I refocused on Zotz. "What? Where?"

"Looks like from under your fingernails. Somebody do the bamboo splinters job on you?"

I shrugged. Or tried anyway: chains clinked. Fand seemed determined to break me of this particular habit. "How would I know? I've been 'out.' "

"Maybe those pop-out claws are malfunctioning. Maybe all sorts of sharp, spiky things are gonna start poking out of your skin and you'll bleed to death."

I turned my head this way and that, trying to see. "Well, aren't you just a little ray of sunshine."

"Sorry. I guess you'd much rather have a pet demon."

"Focus, Zotz. We've got to work together if we're going to figure a way out of this. Too many lives are at stake."

And I told him about all that had happened since I'd hitched a ride in Volpea's head.

"So—the big voodoo lady? Did she survive the blast?" he asked.

"I don't know. I don't know if she was successful in dispersing the storm. If Laveau and her—" I almost said "pet monk" but caught myself in time. "—Rasputin are still alive and functional, they're going to try something again. So, either way, I've got to get back down there and stop them! And the Pointy Sisters are going to have to get out of my way or I won't be the only one bleeding!"

There was a snickt sound.

"What was that?"

Zotz craned his neck around and checked my back. "You bled on the padlock and it popped open."

"What?"

"Yeah. And now it looks like you're bleeding backwards."

"Excuse me?"

"And sideways."

I squirmed in the chair to get some slack and felt the links shift a bit. Then heard the thunk of a padlock hitting the carpet. The chains slipped down and loosened a bit. Slipping free was relatively easy—it only took me another five minutes.

By the time I was out of the chair and retrieving the keys that Zotz had seen Setanta stow in a galley drawer, the chains, chair, and even my fingers were devoid of any blood residue or evidence that I had bled in the first place.

"You're sure what you saw?" I asked as I set him free.

"Didn't imagine your padlock poppin' off, did I?" He got up, stretched, and began to coil one end of his chain around a bunched fist. Swear to God, he was humming "Unchained Melody" under his breath.

I laid a hand on his shoulder. "We don't have time for that. They took you down once, they could do it again. Our best bet is to grab Jamal and get off the boat, jump in the car, and drop him off at Olive's on our way to New Orleans. Think we can do that without the Twister Sisters noticing before we're gone?"

Zotz shook his head. "Jamal's gone. He went for a swim shortly after elfquest arrived."

"What?"

"They weren't paying him no mind, him being all catatonic and all, and he just gets up and walks out the door and over the side before they could grab him."

"And?"

"And nothing. He didn't come back out."

"No one went after him?"

"I wasn't allowed the option. I think Fand's afraid of the water—which is a shame because I bet she'd look bitchin' in a bikini . . ."

I waved my hand in his face. "Again, focus. What about the Mullet?"

Zotz shrugged. "She didn't tell him to. He doesn't do anything 'cept what the faerie queen tells him."

I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. "Olive is going to go nuclear!"

"Just as long as she goes nuclear on the bad guys," the demon muttered as he headed for the portside exit. "The end of the world is just around the corner and I'm tired of getting whaled on by a bunch of women. What are you doing?"

I paused with my hand on the refrigerator door. "Grabbing some snacks for the road. I'm starving."

Zotz shook his head. "Big'n'beefy tossed all of your blood out. I don't think there's a packet left on board."

My heart sank. "What? Why?"

He shrugged. "Probably thought he was messin' with your mojo. He kept talking about how your eyes turned to blood down in the mound when you escaped."

Great. Add "cross the river and get supplies from the blood bank before I turn into a monster" to the list of things to accomplish while dodging werewolves and elves and tentacled extraterrestrials on my way back down to the Crescent City. Seriously, do regular vampires deal with any kind of crap like this?

We managed to get topside without being noticed. Above us, on the top deck, we could hear the muttering of voices and catch an occasional word or phrase. Something about "surveillance" and "presumed threats" and "shifting alliances." As the sun was now on the horizon and we were heading toward it, we had the double advantage of glare and twilight. Still, if they looked over the edge and down, we would be visible right away. We eased over the side and half-swam, half-waded along the shoreline another hundred yards before coming ashore.

Now what?

Climb the stairs up the face of the bluff to the ruins of my old house, cut through the south cemetery and follow the slope back down to a rutted, dirt road that would bring us back around to the parking area where we would—hopefully, still unobserved—slip behind the wheel of my car and get the hell out of Dodge. Or, more accurately in this instance, get the Dodge out of Hell. I patted my waterlogged jeans. For once the omens were good: my car keys were still in my pocket.

The stairs to the top of the bluff were nothing compared to all fifty-one floors of One Shell Square but I was using my own legs this time and shocked to find out that I was a little out of shape. I tried excusing myself on the basis that my body had been on the shelf for an extended period of time but the memory of the mountainous Mama Samm chugging up a skyscraper's worth of steps humbled me.

No wonder I was depressed: every time I turned around my life exhibited new nuances of suckiness.

By the time we reached the top I was huffing and puffing but doubted any little pigs would have cause to worry. I got as far as halfway across the waist-high stone wall bordering the graveyard when I decided to sit for a minute and enjoy the show. It was dusk now and the gathering darkness made the little pinpoints of light dancing across my field of vision all the brighter by contrast.

So what the hell had those little nanobuggers been up to while I was away?

It actually took closer to two minutes for the flickering spots to complete their choreography, take their bows, and one by one exit the proscenium of my vision, but I finally felt like I could go forward without blundering like a rubber-legged blind man.

That's when the ground split open and the first corpse appeared.

He was a desiccated-looking fellow with major chunks of flesh gone missing, peekaboo bone showing in the unnatural hollows of what remained.

"Cséjthe . . ." he said, doing surprisingly well for a guy whose soft palate had either gone hard or was pretty much gone.

"Jerome . . ." I nodded back.

I think he was squinting at Zotz and attempting to raise an eyebrow at me—it's hard to tell when their eye sockets and regions round about are missing most of the major components. "The End Times are upon us and you traffic with demons?" the revenant asked archly. Jerome was of a Pentecostal persuasion and had earned the nickname "Preacher" among the other animated dead in the cemetery. He'd never really approved of any of the company I'd kept so Camazotz was going over like a big ole lead balloon.

Zotz drew himself up, finally transforming himself out of his diminutive human avatar and bulked out in big bad, semi-bat form. "Not just any demon," he growled menacingly at the zombie, "but his personal pet demon!"

I rolled my eyes. "Give it a res—"

"And," Zotz continued theatrically, "he consorts with . . . lesbians!"

Preacher gasped.

I sighed. "Look, boys, I'd love to stay for the Punch and Rudy show but God called and said He'd like to keep the Book of Revelations on schedule. So," I slid down off of the wall, "if you don't mind—"

A rotting hand came up in my face. "Ezekiel twenty-two: twenty-seven," its owner hissed.

I stopped. I didn't want to "talk to the hand" but it beat taking another step and winding up with a squidgy finger up my nose. "What?"

"Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening to the prey," he hissed, "to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain!"

Zotz turned to me after a couple of beats. "What's that mean?"

The rotting reverend cast a meaningful look over his skeletal shoulder, gazing at the far perimeter of the burial grounds.

"It means," I said, as he turned and we started weaving between the tombstones toward the south wall, "he's trying to warn us about something."

"Yeah? Well, how come he didn't just do that in plain English?"

"He sort of has this thing for Biblespeak. Don't you, Jerome?"

"Her princes within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves," Jerome muttered. "They gnaw not the bones till the morrow. Zephaniah three: two through four."

"There. You see?" I said brightly, like it all made sense now. Trouble was, it did make sense—if ole Jere was alluding to what I thought was just one of several loose ends.

"I don't see nothin'," Zotz groused as we reached the far end of the graveyard.

As I leaned over the wall and gazed down the curving slopes where the bluff gave way to a more reasoned approach to the river, Preacher switched from Old to New Testament mode. "Behold," he said, sweeping his decaying arm out along the trajectory of the rutted dirt road below to the grassy flat where a half dozen cars were parked. "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves . . ."

"Got yourself a real Jesus complex there, doncha, hamburger boy," Zotz growled.

" . . . be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves . . ."

"Filter the religious connotations," I told the demon, "focus on the zoological." I pointed down toward the area around the vehicles.

" . . . but beware of men . . . for they will deliver you up to the councils," Preacher finished. "Matthew ten: sixteen and seventeen."

A dozen or more dark forms were moving about down below, some walking upright, some loping about on all fours. I shifted my night vision over into the infrared spectrum. Nearly two dozen forms became evident, even through the cover of the trees and bushes near the river. They blazed white and yellow like lycanthropes, not orange and red like humans or natural wolves.

"Werewolves," I muttered.

"There," Camazotz grunted, "there . . . wolves!"

I punched his ham-sized bicep. "Don't. Even. Start."

"So now what?"

I tried to think. "Too many to take. We'll have to go another way."

Zotz nodded. "The odds are better back at the boat. Three instead of thirty. Plus a little payback is always nice . . ."

"What would Mama Samm say about your thirst for vengeance?"

"She'd say stomp them elves and come save my ass!"

"She would not! Besides, we could just grab a couple of life jackets off of the stern and paddle across the river to the far—"

"Paddle? As in dog-paddle?"

"You cannot swim across the river," Jerome insisted.

"We wouldn't be swimming so much as floating," I pointed out.

"Leviathan waits for you beneath its dark, cold depths." The corpse spread his arms like Jimmy Swaggart. "The dead go to him and do not return."

"Sounds like my old gig," Zotz mused.

I thought about the froggy folk we'd tangled with before. And my disjointed visions of an alien city beneath the ocean where something monstrous slept and dreamt monstrous dreams. Something that was starting to wake up.

"Okay," I said. "We retake the boat. But we aren't doing this alone." I turned to Jerome. "I need volunteers. Zotz and I are heading back the way we came. Tell anyone who's willing to meet us next to the dock where the shadow from the boat blocks the moonlight."

"No one will come."

"What? Why?" It wasn't like I was asking anything dangerous: they'd tackled vampires and worse who'd tried to get to my former residence. Besides, they were already dead, had nothing else to do, and couldn't be killed any deader. Maybe they got miffed that movie nights were canceled when my house burned down and I moved offshore.

"You are not listening," Jerome answered. "I said the dead go unto Leviathan and do not return." His arms swept the expanse of the old graveyard. "All who could leave have gone down to the waters and have joined with his unholy minions. I . . . I alone . . . remain . . ."

Great. Call him Ishmael and what remained of the remains was not going to be of any help. I turned to Zotz. "We'd better get back before we're missed."

"Beware the spawn of Dagon!" Jerome called as we picked our way back down the steps fronting the bluff.

"How about beware the ears of nearby werewolves?" Zotz muttered as we neared the bottom. "I got me a feeling that Bible-boy up there wasn't real popular back when the graveyards were more populous."

"True enough," I admitted as I checked down the shoreline for welcoming committees or signs of activity aboard the New Moon. "But prophets are rarely accepted in their own countries."

"Oh man! Don't tell me you take that guy seriously? I mean it's pretty obvious that his church choir's missing a few hymnals!"

I turned around on the bottom step, forcing Zotz to stumble to a stop two steps behind me. "Two years ago I didn't believe in much of anything," I said quietly. "Since then I've been treated to a whole smorgasbord of what's possible. Forget vampires. Forget werewolves. Forget elves or faeries or whatever else is cataloged in the Grimm lexicon of Things that go Bippidy-Boppidy-Boo in the Night! I've met an honest-to-God angel. And, right now, I'm having a conversation with a demon. So, you'll understand why I'm not completely dismissive of a resurrected dead man who quotes scripture when the rest of the world seems to be going to hell!"

I looked up.

"But right now I think we'd better get back on the boat," I said, "before the Wild Hunt passes by . . ."

Zotz followed my gaze to the top of the bluff where a row of red eyes gazed down at us. As we watched, several sets peeled off from both ends of the line, some wolves starting to pick their way down the wooden steps we had just traversed, the others heading back down the far slope to circle around and try to flank us. As we turned and ran, howls from the ridge signaled the pack members down by the cars that the chase was afoot.

Better yet, the searchlight atop the New Moon flickered on and swung round to illuminate us in its bright-as-day beam. Not only was our night vision destroyed but we were precision targeted for every other predator within a mile of our location.

"Can it get any worse?" I muttered.

There was a thumping sound and the spotlight swung away from us to the base of the bluff where the remaining werewolves were leaping and landing in an attempt to cut us off before we could reach the dock.

"Just had to ask, didn't ya?" Zotz quipped as the first beast limped toward us, reknitting a broken leg in the process.

The drop was too great for any of the creatures to land unscathed. The mud that had cushioned my impact but a couple of days earlier had dried to the consistency of concrete. Still, it wasn't a big enough fall so that a lycanthrope couldn't heal or regenerate in a matter of minutes. Zotz took advantage of the wolf's limited mobility to maneuver around and grab its tail. Jerking it up off the ground, he swung it over his head for a full revolution, releasing it on a trajectory that took it out into the river.

Another light came on.

It was under the water and peered toward the submerged banks like the great phosphorescent eye of the Biblical Leviathan.

The enemy below. The enemy above. What next?

"Yo, Cséjthe, might want to be watching your six," Zotz hollered. He had to, to be heard: the New Moon's engines had started up. Behind me I found two more wolves struggling to flank me even while they were regenerating from a host of injuries from their tumble down the cliff. Our slight advantage was dwindling in the face of growing numbers and quick regenerative powers. And reinforcements would be arriving in a few moments.

I tried willing my hands to turn into sharp, multibladed weapons.

Nothing happened. Other than a few more wolves getting a little closer and looking a bit stronger and more capable.

I banged my shoulder up against the bat-demon. "I need some blood!"

"Yeah? Well, bite me."

"Uh . . . no," I said. "I need some of my blood! I need your claws!" I held my arm out. "Cut me!"

He glanced down at my right wrist and forearm, offered for a little slicing and dicing. "How much?" he asked. "How deep?"

"Not committing suicide. And I don't want to pass out from blood loss . . ." My two wolves were joined by a third and a fourth and had closed the distance to ten feet. "But I need to bleed pretty good in the next twenty seconds or you're in deep doo-doo."

Doo-doo? There was that weird fight-or-flight vocabulary fillip, again.

"I'm in deep—trouble? What about you?" He took my arm and ran his pointy black talons from the back of my hand to my elbow. It tickled. "They get to draw first blood without even laying a paw on you?"

I started to repeat my request when parallel lines appeared in my flesh and began to ooze blood like four leaky fountain pens. Two wolves leapt forward as they saw (and probably smelled) the blood that started to sheet down my arm. I cocked my arm back and then swung it so that my blood flew in a spattering arc before me. It striped across the muzzles of the two wolves closest to me and across the side of another trying to get around Zotz. All three tumbled to the ground and began to thrash about, yipping and whining and snapping at empty air. The engine noises masked the hissing sounds of dissolving tissues but steamy, noxious vapors marked the acidic effects of my silver-laced blood on lycanthropic flesh and fur.

I swept my arm around again and droplets of blood machine-gunned out like a hail of black bullets in the moonlight, fanning across the circle of wolves who pressed in behind their fallen comrades. A dozen went down or staggered back, squealing and yelping and twisting about as the burning solvent from my veins burned through their hides and began to liquefy any tissue, soft or hard, that it encountered underneath.

"Yeah," I murmured as the rest of the pack began to back up, "who's the bigger monster, now?"

"Cséjthe," Zotz called, "they're leaving."

"No they're not. They're just regrouping."

"I mean the boat," he said, tugging on my uninjured arm. "They're casting off!"

The wolf closest to me looked up from its private misery and growled. I raised my right arm threateningly . . . and noticed that the four deep lacerations in my flesh had already closed! Damned nanites!

"All aboard," I said as I turned and ran for the dock.

Zotz was right behind me. The wolves were behind him, though not as close and limping more than running. The mooring lines had been pulled and hurriedly cast aside and Setanta was wrestling with the gangplank as we pounded onto the dock. The New Moon was already six feet away from the pier and moving.

"I don't! Know if! I can! Make it!" I grunted. As running broad jumps go, the odds were, at best, fifty-fifty. In the dark, on a wet planked surface, and a half ton of bat-demon turning the whole dock into a wooden trampoline with every bounding step. I could hardly keep from falling on my face, never mind getting up the velocity and balance to clear the railing on my departing houseboat.

"Don't stop!" Zotz demanded, practically breathing down my neck.

Then he grabbed me. One hand on my collar, the other on the back of my belt: I was lifted off my feet and flung back behind him. Thrown to the wolves! Except he didn't let go: I was swung forward again before I was released, to go hurtling over the last ten feet of dock and another ten of black water. I smashed into Setanta who had just set the gangplank out of the way, staggering him back against the salon door with me in a mad embrace.

He stared at me as if unable to fathom what he was holding in his arms. "What . . . ?"

"Hey, Gargantua," I croaked, "haven't you ever heard of 'don't ask, don't tell'?"

His response was lost in Camazotz Chamalcan's arrival—who slammed into the both of us, breaking down the door and tumbling us across the salon and halfway through the window on the far side of the cabin. Fortunately it was closed. That way the glass could slow us down before we went overboard on the other side. Whoever was walking along the starboard gangway outside wasn't so lucky: she went ass over teakettle and into the river. Good news for us: we had reduced the enemy compliment by a full third.

The New Moon was angling out away from the shore, presumably to discourage any furry boarders. But were we any safer in deep water? The mysterious beam of light beneath the waves swept around to illuminate the houseboat, reminding us that we had bigger fish to fry than a mere platoon of lycanthropes.

Zotz hauled the Mullet off of me and I began the process of extricating myself from the shattered window. Some of the shards had gone in pretty deep but there was surprisingly little blood. And the wounds closed almost immediately as I pulled the glass out. But it wasn't painless. Whatever the nanites were doing to regenerate the damaged tissue, the wounds and the healing process still hurt like a sonuvabitch!

Which was okay, in some twisted fashion: at least I was feeling something beyond the numbed and weary state I generally found myself in these days.

"Let me go!" the Mullet was bellowing. He couldn't do much else. When a Mesoamerican bat-demon has you in a full nelson, you ain't going anywhere—even if you are big enough to make Dolph Lundgren look like Danny DeVito.

"Please!" he finally pleaded, trying to strain a little less against the furry vise that held him fast.

Now my mother taught me that, in certain times and at certain places, "please" is a magic word. But not this time and not this place. Zotz shifted his grip and put Setanta into a sleeper hold.

As fate would have it, however, just before his air was cut off, Setanta managed to say the right magic words for this time and place.

 

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Framed