Zorro stepped in front of me, blades flashing. I turned my back to his. Tried to place my feet for better balance, but the knee was weak. I dropped to my good knee, injured one up, foot on the floor. I cut upward. At the underbelly of a wolf. A second wolf came from my left. Fast. Faster than I could move. Fire Truck. The massive wolf bit down on my elbow. Bones crunched. Mine, unfortunately.
Pain shocked through me, up my arm, down to my fingers, paralyzing. With one arm, I fought off another wolf, but Fire Truck sensed my weakness. His jaws relaxed, left my wounded arm for an instant. Snapped back in, mouth open. Latched on again, just below the injured joint. Growling, he shook me, slinging my entire body left and right, across the blood-slick floor. I gagged with the pain. Stabbed at him. Caught him on the side.
From above, I saw a flash of silver. Fire Truck yelped. Dropped me. Zorro stepped across my form, booted feet to either side. I curled around myself, shivering with shock and pain. Found the H&K under my side, jabbing. One handed, I changed magazines, clumsy and slow.
Around me, the silvered swords sang, the man moving with grace and speed that a dancer would envy. Fast as lightning and nearly as bright. He was faster than anything I had ever seen. Faster than a vamp. Two more wolves went down, blood pooling, looking black on the navy floor. There were more than twenty of them. Seven were dead or too wounded to crawl away.
Roul’s wolf leaped from a table and landed on my protector’s back. Claws scoured along his cheek, a right paw curved in and tore through his shirt, raking along his side. I couldn’t fire without risking hitting Zorro. With my injured hand, I stabbed up. Slicing along the wolf’s side, cutting deep. The wolf yelped and flinched. As if anticipating it, Zorro bent, took one step, and twisted; the motion threw Roul across the room. A long blade swung up and scored the wolf’s other side as he flew. Wolf blood and the blood of the swordsman flung into the air. Roul landed hard and slid, scattering tables and chairs.
I shot the wolf closest. A gray-black wolf with deep drown eyes. It skittered back, legs flailing, claws losing purchase on the blood-slick floor. I aimed at another.
The wolves drew back. Roul turned, tail down. He limped for the side door, the others racing with him, leaving behind their fallen. Seven lay unmoving. Five more crawled or limped for the exit. Five seemed mostly healthy and scattered, taking up the rear, growling at me and my savior. “My count was off,” I said. I caught the hint of movement to my side. An impact over my ear. And blackness closed in around me.
CHAPTER 4
Yeah. Sure. Strip, Zorro.
I came to in the open air, looking up at the stars and the sliver of a one day moon, Beast-talk for the first moon after a new moon. I’d have smiled but the pain hit me, an electric agony that tore through me like a red-hot spear. A hand caught my nape and eased me to my side where I threw up on the grass. “Crap, that’s bad,” I gasped.
“The pain or the regurgitation of stomach contents?”
“Both.” We weren’t on civilized grass, like the sod near Booger’s. Beneath me were rough cut weeds, like the parish might mow on the verge of a secondary road. And the world was dark, no artificial light. Yet I smelled hot pavement and exhaust and heard the pinging of Bitsa’s engine, a sound I’d have recognized anywhere. The bike should be cooled off, still parked at Booger’s Scoot. The bike should have been impossible to kick-start for anyone but me, what with the witchy locks activated. But Bitsa had been ridden here, wherever here was. And I had to guess that I’d been transported here too. On Bitsa? Over Zorro’s shoulder, my boots dragging on the ground? The mental image was farcical and I chuckled, my tone as sour as the taste in my mouth.
“I have healed you as much as I am able,” Zorro said from close by. “My magics, they are few in this world. And you are not fully human. Though I have protected you from contagion by the wolf-taint, I dare not try more.”
I rolled back, face to the night sky, concentrating on breathing. The one day moon, sharp pointed and thin, was perched in a live oak tree, half hidden by the leaves. On the night air was the faint stink of swamp, the vomit, blood—a lot of it mine—and were-stink. I have protected you from contagion by the wolf-taint, he’d said. At least I wasn’t going to howl at the moon in a couple of weeks.
“Did you hit me? There at the end?”
“No. Regrettably, we both missed one wolf in human form. He hit you. I hit him.” Zorro shrugged, the motion looking odd in the moonlight, as if his shoulders didn’t work right.
I sat up. Slowly. My body creaked and spasmed with the motion. I was breathing hard, sweating in the heat, even with my jacket unzipped. He offered me a bottle of designer water and opened it when I nodded. My fingers worked to close over the bottle. Huzzah. Fingers worked. I drank. The moisture cleared my head, enough to know I was still hurt, though not quite so badly. I stretched out the arm that Fire Truck had worried like prey. My elbow was in less salutary condition, but it would heal next time I shifted. I cleared my voice to ask him his name and, instead, what came out was, “Where the heck were you? There weren’t any rafters.”
Zorro chuckled softly and stretched out his legs on the night-dark grass, crossed his feet at the ankles, and leaned back to brace his upper body on locked arms. On the night air I smelled jasmine and pine as he moved, and the commingled scents settled my stomach, but vanished before I could draw another breath. “I was perched on the horizontal ventilation shaft. Dusty.” He brushed at his silver-studded clothes.
The ventilation shaft had been twelve, fifteen feet over my head in the old Esso station of Booger’s Scoot. That was some drop.