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slice on my palm. Still bleeding. It was hard to tell if the black traceries were still there. For a moment, I wondered.
    Then I brought myself back to the thing I had to do. Stupid body, getting all worked up. What the will demands, the body will do—but it also tries to wriggle, sometimes.
    Not this time.
    “Kiss!” he howled. “You’re mine! MINE! You cannot escape me!”
    I saw Saul’s face, yellow and exhausted, against the white pillow. I smelled him, the musk and fur of a healthy cat Were. I saw Galina’s wide green eyes and marcel waves, Hutch’s shy smile, Gilberto’s fierce glittering-dark gaze. I saw them all, saw my city hunched on the river’s edge, its skyscrapers throwing back dusk’s last light with a vengeance before the dark things crawled out of their holes. I saw Anya perched on Galina’s roof with her green bottle, staring down at the street and wondering if I had the strength to do this. Wondering if she would have to hunt me down, if I failed here.
    And I heard Mikhail. There, little snake. Honest silver, on vein to heart. You are apprentice. Now it begins.
    I love you, I thought. I love you all.
    “You cannot escape!” Perry screamed, throwing himself at the banefire again. It sizzled and roared, and the rocks around me begin to ring like a crystal wineglass stroked just right. If this kept up they might shatter.
    Wouldn’t that be a sight.
    “Do you hear me, hunter? You cannot escape me!”
    Watch me, I thought, and squeezed both eyes shut. The banefire roared as he tried again to get through, actually thrusting a hand through its wall, snatching it back with a shattering howl as the skin blackened and curled. It was now or never.
    I squeezed the trig—
     
    —up from the concrete with a southpaw punch, bone shattering as my fist hit. My foot flicked out, heel striking sharply in the second man’s midriff, and I was beginning to wake up. The alley tilted crazily, both sides leaning toward each other like old drinking buddies, and the rotting refuse in choke-deep drifts along its sides smelled about as horrible as I did. Faint grayish light seeped in through the crack of sky showing above. The sky was weeping a little, a diseased eye.
    There were two more of them, one with a chain that rattled musically as he shook it. Cold fear and exhilaration spilled through me like wine.
    Gutter trash, Jill. Not worth your time.
    But my body wasn’t listening. It knew better than I did, and I was suddenly across the distance separating me from Chain Boy, my knee coming up and sinking into his groin with a short meaty sound. He folded down, and I had the gun in my right hand, pointed at the last man. He fetched up like a dog at the end of his tether.
    A chain’s only good if you can use it. It’s also only good for a very short distance, shorter than you’d think.
    For a moment I wondered how I knew that.
    The fourth man was actually a boy. A weedy little boy with greasy lank hair and a lean, sallow face, a leather jacket that creaked like the cow was still mooing and hadn’t missed it yet, and pegged jeans that looked dipped in motor oil. The switchblade made a small clatter as it hit the concrete, dropping from his nerveless hand. My finger tightened on the trigger.
    He’s just a kid. Come on.
    But that kid would’ve followed his buddies in raping and possibly killing me if I was what they’d thought I was.
    Wait. What am I? It said something that even sleeping like the dead, I kept hold of a gun.
    I didn’t see the Mercury. Martin D. Pores, nice guy and granny driver, had left me in an alley. Nice of him. Why was I surprised? Of course he would, it was the way things were going.
    Pay attention! A sharp phantom slap, my head snapping aside, and my right foot flicked out again, catching sneaky Guy # 2 in the knee. Crack like well-seasoned firewood when the axe split it, and he folded down with a rabbit-scream.
    Must’ve hurt.
    The boy in the motorcycle jacket just stood there and