“What do you want?” the woman asked. She had one knee on Will’s chest, a half inch from his windpipe. Her other foot was planted firmly on the ground. In her hand she held a heavy black gun, which she wielded as though it were a tube of lipstick.
I pressed myself against the wall, feeling my shoulder blades against the cold, hard steel of the door. I wanted to do something, to rush her, to take her down in a move that would make Angelina Jolie or Jackie Chan proud. Instead, all I could do was think how badly I needed to pee, and that if I were to make a sound, that lady would squeeze the trigger and Will would be dead.
“What do you want?”
“We come in peace!” I blurted it out before I thought about it. Both Will and the woman about to blow his brains out turned and stared at me.
“She’s got a gun, love, not an alien life-form,” Will said, sounding way too calm for imminent doom.
I dug in my pocket and the woman swung the gun on me. “Hands up!”
I threw my hands straight up—and to be honest, a little bit of my lunch—while Will knocked the stunned gun girl off him, did some sort of barrel roll, and pinned her. He yanked the gun out of her hand and shoved it in his back waistband.
“Let’s none of us try to kill each other for about thirty seconds, okay?”
The woman writhed underneath Will, but she slowly stilled.
“What do you want?” she spat.
I pulled the ziplock bag of bullets out of my pocket and rushed over, shaking it in front of her. “We’re looking for the person who made these.”
Her eyes sliced down to the bag and then held mine. “You’ll have to let me up. I can’t get a look at them.”
Will looked at me and then at her. “How do I know you’re not going to try to kill us again?”
“You have the gun. How do I know you’re not going to try to kill me?”
Will handed me the gun. “Go put this up.” And then, to her, “I’m going to let you up now. We just want some answers. No trouble.”
“Are you Xian?” I asked.
“No.” The woman rose up on her elbows. “You already met Xian, out there. I’m her sister, Feng. Why do you want to know about these bullets?”
“Do you recognize them?” I pushed the bag into Feng’s hand.
“Maybe.”
I sighed. “Look, we’re not cops. We’re not after you or looking to cause any trouble. Someone shot at me with these bullets. They shot at me and my friends.”
“So?”
I took the bag back and pushed one of the bullets out. “So these are silver bullets. Silver bullets are only used to kill very specific things.”
Feng said nothing, but everything was held in her stare.
“They kill werewolves,” I said.
Feng’s eyebrows rose. “Who did you say you were, again?”
Will helped Feng up.
“I’m Sophie, and this is Will. We’ve ... we’ve been having some problems, and we need to know where someone would get bullets like these.”
Feng cocked her head, seemingly not understanding. “Why did you come here? To me?”
I glanced around the dismal cave of a workshop and determined that the likelihood of Feng placing an ad in the Guardian or on public-access television was probably a long shot.
“Dixon Andrade.” It wasn’t a complete lie.
Feng shook her head. “Dixon, huh?” But she seemed pacified and almost smiled. “Okay. So what do you want?”
“Do you know where to get the bullets?”
Feng sat down, kicked her booted feet up, and popped a handful of nuts into her mouth. “I know who makes them.”
I felt my eyebrows rise. “You do?”
Feng smiled. “Yeah. Me.” She opened the toolbox on the table and plucked out a silver bullet and set it on the table next to the one I brought in. She examined mine from all sides; then sat back, satisfied. “I made this one in the spring.”
“How do you know?”
“Is it some sort of Underworldy voodoo thing?” Will wanted to know.
Feng looked confused, then spun the bullet. A tiny Chinese symbol was carved on the blunt end. “All of our bullets are marked with a seasonal sign.”
“That’s a lovely sentiment for an instrument of death,” Will said, smiling nervously.
“Our bullets?” I asked.
“It’s kind of a family business.”
I felt like someone had let all the air out of the room.
Feng’s cheery smile swirled in front of my eyes. Will slid a chair underneath me, just as my legs went wobbly.
“You’re werewolf hunters?” I asked breathlessly.
Feng beamed with something that looked shockingly like pride.
“There’s barely a dog left in the city, thanks to my family.” Feng gestured to the large, painted family crest behind her. The surname Du was intertwined with the American spelling, a stylized painting of a wounded werewolf dying behind the heavy black print.
On a daily basis the Underworld Detection Agency processed at least a dozen vampires coming or going, a good handful of zombies (more, lately), plus a smattering of all other matter of demon. But werewolves were rare.
Now I knew why.
“My family has been here for over a hundred years. We were sent to America—San Francisco, particularly—to deal with hordes of dogs out here.”