The human wolf to his left hunched slightly, ears twitching with an unlikely flexibility. Apparently this was a familiar and potentially explosive refrain. "He's a shit all right, boss. We all seen it," he offered in a placating tone.

Boaz was in no mood to be soothed. "Misshapen thing, he's no good for the pack. No good for the hunt. He should've been culled." He drained his glass. "Culled a long time ago."

"Culled." It was whispered around the circle. Heads nodded, some human, some shaggy.

"He's deformed, weak, wrong." Knuckles blanched white around the cheap glass tumbler.

The heads nodded again. "Deformed." "Wrong." None repeated the word "weak." They seemed sure that while Cerberus was many, many things… disturbing things… weak wasn't one of them. As much as Boaz didn't want to admit it, that telling omission said that Cerberus was strong, cunning, and a power to be reckoned with. And wasn't that really what got Boaz's goat?

"He's an aberration." The glass shattered in his hand, blood-coated shards falling to the table, and a homicidal grin of suddenly lengthening teeth was aimed in our direction. "An aberration who sends his spies among us. Did you like the show, spies? Were you entertained?" Growing nails speared through the table as if it were cheap cardboard and his gaze focused on me. "You smell like Auphe, but I think you'll taste of human."

Spies. It was either a paranoid and freakishly good guess or someone under Cerberus had loose lips. And I wasn't a big believer in good guesses. It was a safe bet that someone had given us up, but I didn't wait around to ponder the subject. Neither did Promise. She performed a flip over my head that was a quicksilver study in deadly grace. I heard her land behind me and I wasted no time in pulling my Glock. I was going to get off only a few shots in these closed quarters; I had to make them count. Boaz was my choice for deadliest flavor of the month and I popped off my first shot in his direction. He was already half-changed as he catapulted across the table toward me, twisting to avoid my bullet. It was a lost cause. It took him high in the chest. Then his lost cause became mine; he kept coming. Silver bullets, like so many other things, were a myth. Your average lead worked just fine… eventually. But right now his jaws, about the size of a Kodiak bear's, were headed inexorably for my throat. I blocked him with my left forearm, ramming my arm far enough into his mouth that I could've tickled Boaz's tonsils. Less than that and my bone would've snapped like a twig. But back where the leverage was weaker, it held… barely. Granted, there was a white-hot pain from my fingertips to my shoulder that had black spots clouding the edges of my vision, but that was the absolute least of my concerns. I still held the gun in my right hand and I pulled the trigger again and again. With his chest against mine I couldn't aim for his heart, but there was someplace else open and vulnerable. Every one of my bullets found a home in Boaz's center torso, about diaphragm level. If that didn't stop him, nothing would. He might be the biggest baddest son of a were-bitch to walk the earth, but he had to breathe.

Or so went the theory.

In reality, Boaz was doing his damnedest to rip my arm from my body. With the last shot in the magazine, I blew off a good hunk of the lower part of his jaw. Pulling my arm free, I wedged a knee between us and flung him off. The brown wolf, half again bigger than a Shetland pony, tumbled onto the table, which promptly shattered beneath his weight. Dropping the gun, I staggered to my feet, unsheathed my knife, and whirled to slash at the throat of the next wolf in line. Vision clearing, I kept Promise in sight out of the corner of my eye. I'd made a pledge to my brother; I wasn't about to break it. Lucky for me, being a little occupied at the moment, she was more than holding her own. In a pirouette as flowing as that of any dancer, she spun her cape of purple silk around one wolfs head, blinding him, and then tossed him headfirst into the nearest wall. I heard something crack… wall or skull, I couldn't say for sure. Then she leaped backward and up, clinging high to the wall and facing the fight with calculating eyes. Now that was something I hadn't seen out of her before. It was kind of… well, spooky as shit just about covered it.

"Okay, Princess," I called out, "you are seriously freaking me out." I didn't mention her real name. Wouldn't do to put any of us on the radar of Cerberus's enemies. Life was complicated enough. She didn't acknowledge the comment, instead descending again into the milling pack with the grace of a diving falcon. Wolves scattered beneath her. Yeah, she was holding her own all right. Now time for me to do the same.

Gushing blood from his carotid artery, my wolf went down and two more rose in his place. These were a little more wary. From the panicked flaring of wolfish nostrils and the rolling of white-ringed eyes, they were far more impressed with my Auphe heritage than Boaz was. What had been a bald guy and a black one had turned into a sadly mangy wolf and a rangy, long-legged obsidian one. Growling and snapping at each other to bolster their courage, they finally managed to get up the furry cojones to make their move. Patches went down with a blade in the eye. I felt queasy on that one. He was a Were determined to rip me into Snausage-sized pieces, but that moth-eaten coat gave him the last-dog-in-the-pound look. Albeit a rabid dog with a thirst for blood and pain. As I pulled the blade free, his pal hit me from the side, and down I went again. This guy had nothing on his boss. He growled like an entire pack of wolves and lunged at my face with snapping jaws, but hesitated for one critical moment when I snarled back.

I took advantage and broke Bowser's top teeth out with the blade of my. knife. Pointed fangs half the length of my hand went flying accompanied by a pained howling. If a wolf had vanity, it lay in his pearly whites. Snatching a glance over my shoulder, I saw the spike heel of Promise's elaborately strappy shoes take one wolf directly between the eyes. He somersaulted head over paws backward with a glazed sheen across his yellow eyes. We had six wolves down for the count, or so I thought. That left three more… three until Boaz resurfaced from the wreckage of the table. Goddamn, what did it take to keep that hairy bastard down? Even in wolf form, oddly enough, his eyes were still black, and they held the same pitiless and implacable chill of death.

It had been barely two and a half minutes since the fight had begun. Still, it didn't surprise me in the slightest when Niko came through the door, a dark-clad missile of destruction. I was wearing a wire for a reason, and my brother wasn't one to let the grass grow under his feet. The wood of the door was sturdy enough; it didn't matter. It disintegrated under Niko's kick. Boaz didn't turn; he didn't have a chance. The gape-jawed wolf was the recipient of Niko's sword through his broad brown chest. "Let's go," Niko ordered tersely. "This isn't what we're here for." Gee, a little death and dismemberment wasn't on the schedule? What a pity. I dodged a big gray wolf—all of them by now had turned—and booted it in the ass hard enough to send it flying into a still-thrashing Boaz. Goddamn, that was one tough wolf.

Promise flowed past me with, if you could believe it, her cloak retrieved and folded neatly over her arm. She paused for the briefest of moments to murmur in Niko's ear and then passed through the door to the outer room. Niko turned his attention to the convulsing Boaz with calculating consideration. I saw his hand tighten slightly on the hilt of his sword before he came to a decision. Killing Boaz wasn't the job we'd taken. It wasn't one we would've taken. Boaz was Cerberus's problem, not that that changed the fact there were three more wolves rushing forward to take us out. Niko looked at me sharply and repeated, "Go."